If you haven’t heard much about Russia’s war in Ukraine lately, it’s not because no news is good news. In fact, the war in Ukraine may be tipping in exactly the direction Russian President Vladimir Putin wants.
Ukraine failed to make major breakthroughs in its much-touted 2023 offensive, intended to break Russian lines in eastern and southern Ukraine and push Russian forces back toward the Crimean peninsula. Billions of dollars’ worth of American and European military hardware arrived too late, giving Russian forces months to build stout defenses Ukraine proved unable to penetrate, except for small breakthroughs. Exhaustion and winter mud have now effectively ended that offensive.
Isolationist Republicans who now control the US House of Representatives have so far scotched $61 billion in additional aid President Biden wants for Ukraine, and some weaponry designated for Ukraine is now instead headed to Israel as it wages war with the Hamas terrorist group. Nobody’s going soft in Russia, however, where Putin is boosting defense spending from 4% of GDP to 10%.
Despite devastating losses, Russia’s posture in Ukraine is getting stronger, with some analysts saying it is Ukraine that now needs to shift to defense. “Russia will be materially advantaged in 2024,” military analyst Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said on a recent podcast. “If the West just assumes it’s a stalemate and can reduce its commitment to Ukraine, Russian advantages will compound because Russia doesn’t accept the stalemate.”
A slim majority of Americans still support robust US aid for Ukraine, but opposition has grown during the last six months. Most Republicans now say the United States is doing too much for Ukraine, while only 44% of Independents and 14% of Democrats feel that way. A chief complaint among Ukraine objectors is that President Biden should be focusing more on homegrown problems such as inflation and the influx of undocumented migrants.
Plus, the stakes in Ukraine could be far higher than many Americans appreciate. If Putin reverses his losses in Ukraine and ends up victorious, it would validate his view that the West doesn’t have the stomach for an ugly, drawn-out war, even if its own troops aren’t involved. Putin has ambitions beyond Ukraine, and if the West gives up on Ukraine it could meet Putin in Poland or the Baltic states, all members of the NATO military alliance.
Ambitions beyond Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin (Sputnik/Valery Sharifulin/Pool via REUTERS) (Sputnik Photo Agency / reuters)
Also watching closely is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has ordered his nation’s military to be capable of invading and conquering Taiwan by 2027. A key factor in Xi’s decision to invade will undoubtedly be his estimate of US and allied resolve in their vows to help defend the breakaway democratic island. If the US-led alliance fails Ukraine, it would be rational for Xi to conclude they’d bail on Taiwan, too. And a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an economic earthquake that makes Putin’s energy war, waged in parallel with his military war in Ukraine, seem tame.
Ukraine isn’t losing. Early in the war, it repelled invading Russia forces from northern Ukraine, and later in 2022, from key strongholds in the northeast and southeast. Ingenious naval drones have chased Russian warships away from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and allowed the export of grain and other products, an astonishing feat for a country that basically lacks a navy. Russia still controls 18% of the Ukraine, but has gained basically no ground all year.
Two Western assumptions about the war have collapsed, however. The first is that Western training, intelligence, and equipment would tilt the war in Ukraine’s favor. It hasn’t. The second is that Russia would continue the shambolic battlefield performance of the invasion’s early days, when poorly prepared units expecting a cakewalk instead met determined resistance that sent them reeling. But the Russians have learned to plug holes, adapt to Ukrainian innovations, and keep their war machine rumbling along.
Some analysts snickered when Russia made a deal to buy ammunition from hermetic North Korea, but that deal may provide Russia with more artillery shells in 2024 than Ukraine will get from its own allies. That’s a key edge in a war where artillery is one of the most important weapons. Russia showed another weakness by buying relatively low-tech attack drones from Iran. But now Russia is building those drones on its own, by the hundreds, and using them in attempts to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses in a likely effort to wreck the country’s energy infrastructure again this winter, as it tried to do last year.
Ukraine pioneered some of the early innovations using armed drones to penetrate enemy lines. But Russia’s state machinery is now cranking out more drones than Ukraine can produce, and using them to deadly effect. As for battle tactics, Russia continues to expend soldiers in appalling human-wave attacks in which commanders seem to treat bodies as receptacles for bullets. There are sporadic protests in Russia of long deployments for troops and other concerns, but nothing approaching mass discontent with the war, suggesting Putin sees no constraint on sacrificing his own troops — another advantage over Ukraine, which husbands its human resources much more carefully.
Meanwhile, some Ukraine backers are beginning to say it’s time for Ukraine and its allies to change strategies.
“Kyiv’s war aims — the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukrainian land and the full restoration of its territorial integrity, including Crimea — remain legally and politically unassailable,” Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan wrote in Foreign Affairs recently. “But strategically they are out of reach, certainly for the near future and quite possibly beyond. [Ukraine’s] near-term priorities need to shift from attempting to liberate more territory to defending and repairing the more than 80 percent of the country that is still under its control.”
Haass and Kupchan argue that Ukraine should dig its own defensive fortifications, similar to Russia’s, and push for an enforceable cease-fire, while letting Russia worry about further territorial gains.
Since Russia invaded in February 2022, the Biden administration has armed Ukraine incrementally, first withholding and then providing key equipment such as armor, air defenses, and missiles that can reach far behind enemy lines. Biden has been careful not to push a nuclear-armed Russia over some perceived red line that would trigger a disproportionate Russian response. Europe has broadly followed the same pattern. But Russia never responded as more and more advanced Western weaponry arrived in Ukraine, prompting complaints that Washington has been too timid, and is not in it to win it.
So, the weapon tease continues. In October, the United States provided Ukraine with a small number of long-range ATACMS missiles capable of reaching Russian targets more than 100 miles away, threatening airfields, headquarters, and other crucial nodes. In the first strike using the new missiles, Ukraine reportedly destroyed more than a dozen Russian helicopters used to strafe Ukraine’s front-line troops. But there has been only one other known ATACMS firing since then. “This is a sign that the Biden Administration never wanted to give them in the first place, and is still strictly limiting what they will give Ukraine,” O’Brien wrote.
The next 12 months are likely to be momentous. Putin faces reelection in March, and while there’s no doubt he’ll win, Putin wants high turnout and a lopsided victory, so he may keep the war on simmer until then. Once the election’s over, Russia seems likely to mount a new mobilization effort to funnel more troops into Ukraine and press its manpower advantage. Sanctions are stifling the Russian economy, yet Russia is still selling plenty of oil, its main source of revenue, and finding most of the components it needs to boost defense production.
Putin also has a keen interest in next year’s US presidential election.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump is broadly viewed as a Putin patsy who would end the war in one day, as he says, by suspending US aid to Ukraine and giving Putin much or all of what he wants. “The event most likely to bring US backing for Ukraine to a juddering halt would be a victory by Donald Trump,” historian Lawrence Freedman of King’s College wrote on Nov. 23. “Putin might assume this to be such a positive possibility that it is one worth waiting for.”
No outcome is preordained.
Ukraine’s allies might yet rally and overcome the war fatigue that seems to settle more easily on allies far from the fighting than on those in the midst of it. In Washington, the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says he’s “confident” that Congress will provide more aid for Ukraine, though it may be far less than the $61 billion Biden wants. In Europe, several nations are ramping up weapons production to fill gaps the United States might leave. At some point in 2024, Ukraine seems likely to get Western fighter jets and finally be able to provide consistent air cover for infantry, a condition so fundamental to American military doctrine that the Pentagon would never consider fighting as the Ukrainians have been doing.
The Carnegie Endowment’s Kofman argues that the biggest American shortcoming in Ukraine isn’t some miracle weapon system, but the lack of advisers in-country who can understand how the plucky Ukrainians fight and tailor American aid to that. There’s a good reason Americans aren’t doing that: It conjures the specter of Vietnam, when advisers morphed into combatants and a slippery slope became a mudslide. It would be more fraught still if Americans ended up in direct combat with Russians.
But something needs to change if American resolves means anything, and it may start with America determining if it has that resolve in the first place.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance.
Putin ready to sacrifice his people in Ukraine war, says retired Marine Corps Gen. Jones
The New Voice of Ukraine – November 28, 2023
Russian dictator Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to sacrifice his people in the war against Ukraine, but the Russians are not capable of achieving his goals, former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe James L. Jones said in an interview with Radio Liberty on Nov. 26.
“I think one thing that was always clear is that the Russian leader was willing to commit whatever manpower he needed because they outnumber the Ukrainians in terms of population,” Jones said.
The ability of the Russians “to launch a major offensive (by drafting) young men and (throwing) them into the Russian Army, even though they’re fairly poorly trained” cannot be discounted, General Jones argued.
It is clear that the lessons of the first year of the war have taken root in both Russia and Ukraine, as both sides now know each other better – and know where their strengths and weaknesses are, the general said.
“It’s not surprising that both sides are trying to exploit that advantage,” Jones said.
Donald Trump Wants Federal Government To “Come Down Hard” On MSNBC For Its Criticism Of Him
Ted Johnson – November 29, 2023
Former President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media are central to his image, but he’s once again calling on the federal government to take action against NBCUniversal for its MSNBC criticism of him.
In a late night post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump complained that MSNBC “uses FREE government approved airwaves, and yet it is nothing but a 24 hour hit job” on him and “the Republican party for the purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”
He also attacked Brian Roberts, the CEO of NBCU parent Comcast, as a “slimeball who has been able to get away from these constant attacks for years.”
“It’s the world’s biggest political contribution to the Radical Left Democrats who, by the way, are destroying our Country. Our so-called ‘government’ should come down hard on them and make them pay for their illegal political activity. Much more to come, watch!”
A bit of background: MSNBC is a cable network, so it does not use the public airwaves. Yet even if it was a broadcast outlet, the FCC has been clear that it will not regulate news programming content. The Fairness Doctrine, which required that broadcasters present an array of viewpoints on controversial issues, was abandoned more than 35 years ago during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
The Federal Election Commission expenditure rules, meanwhile, exclude the news media, or more specifically, “any cost incurred in covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial by any broadcasting station (including a cable television operator, programmer or producer).”
Trump’s attacks on NBC, MSNBC and Roberts are nothing new. In the first year of his presidency, he was upset over the network’s reporting and suggested that NBC’s broadcast license be challenged. Ajit Pai, who Trump appointed to chair the FCC, said a week later that the FCC “under the law does not have the authority to revoke the license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”
While Trump’s Truth Social post was one of many, many outbursts at the news media, his suggestion of government retaliation, something that would surely raise a First Amendment challenge, also comes as many of his allies and others on the right chide tech platforms for censorship over their content moderation practices.
The Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana have been challenging the Biden administration’s contacts with social media platforms, claiming that they were efforts to curb misinformation about Covid vaccines and elections were in fact censoring conservative speech. The administration has argued that it is merely pointing out the spread of misinformation on platforms about urgent issues of public health and election integrity. Supreme Court last month lifted a preliminary injunction on Biden administration contacts while it will hear arguments in the case in a hearing next year.
Trump has told supporters that he would be their “retribution” in a second term, and has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden and his family. The New York Times and The Washington Post also have been reporting in recent weeks on Trump and his allies’ plans for a second term, including taking greater hold over the federal workforce.
Russia is preparing a ‘loyalty agreement’ requirement for foreigners
Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly – November 29, 2023
Steam rises from chimneys of a heating power plan over the skyline of central Moscow
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s interior ministry has prepared draft legislation that would force foreigners to sign a “loyalty agreement” forbidding them from criticising official policy, discrediting Soviet military history, or contravening traditional family values.
Since President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has introduced a slew of tough laws that outlaw discrediting the military, and courts have handed down long jail sentences to opposition activists.
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, Putin has cast the war as part of an existential battle with the West, saying he will defend Russia’s “sacred” civilisation from what he portrays as the West’s decadence.
The TASS state news agency reported on Wednesday that the draft legislation had been prepared by the interior ministry and would force all foreigners entering Russia to sign an agreement that essentially restricts what they can say in public.
A foreigner entering Russia would be prohibited from “interfering with the activities of public authorities of the Russian Federation, discrediting in any form the foreign and domestic state policy of the Russian Federation, public authorities and their officials”, TASS said.
The proposed agreement would include clauses about morality, family, “propaganda about non-traditional sexual relations” and history.
In particular, foreigners would be barred from “distorting the historical truth about the feat of the Soviet people in the defence of the Fatherland and its contribution to the victory over fascism”.
The Soviet Union is estimated to have lost at least 27 million people in World War Two and eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin. Governments loyal to Moscow then took power across swathes of eastern Europe.
It was not clear from Russian media reports which foreigners the draft legislation – if it becomes law – would apply to or what the punishment would be for not adhering to the “agreement” which foreigners would have to sign upon entry to Russia.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the initiative.
‘LOYALTY AGREEMENT’
Opposition activists and foreign diplomats in Moscow have for months been warning that the authorities are toughening their stance on any dissent ahead of the presidential election.
The Kremlin said earlier this month that some measure of censorship was needed as Russian troops were fighting in Ukraine, and cautioned those who wanted to criticise the military to think carefully before they did.
For the draft to become law, it has to be introduced to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, and to go through committee review and several readings before being submitted to Putin for signing.
The chairman of the Duma’s CIS Affairs Committee said that the draft law was well advanced and was being worked on by the interior ministry, the government, the presidential administration as well as his committee.
“The draft law on the so-called ‘loyalty agreement’ with migrants entering the Russian Federation is in a high degree of readiness,” Leonid Kalashnikov told Interfax.
Kalashnikov said some details of the proposed law were still to be worked out. The interior ministry did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.
The law has not yet been introduced formally in parliament, according to Reuters searches of the Duma’s database.
Since the start of its war in Ukraine, Russia has imposed a number of restrictions on foreigners from what it calls “unfriendly countries” – meaning those that have imposed sanctions on it over its war in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Nick Macfie)
Russia’s Putin, shown alongside Orthodox icon image, warns West against meddling
Guy Faulconbridge – November 28, 2023
Russian President Putin attends a plenary session of the World Russian People’s Council, via video link in Sochi
MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin, whose picture was shown between two giant images of an ancient Orthodox icon on Tuesday, warned the West ahead of elections in March 2024 that any foreign meddling in Russia would be considered an act of aggression.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, prompting Putin to pivot towards China.
Since the invasion, Putin has changed the narrative of the war, casting it as an existential battle between sacred Russian civilisation and an arrogant West which he says is in cultural, political and economic decline.
Speaking to the World Russian People’s Council, led by the head of Russia’s Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, Putin’s picture was shown on a giant screen beside two copies of an ancient Orthodox icon. Such icons are stylised, often gilded, religious paintings considered sacred in Orthodox churches.
The Russian Orthodox Church is an ardent institutional supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Putin has espoused its conservatism as part of his vision for Russia’s national identity.
The Kremlin chief said that the West was gripped by racist Russophobia which casts Russians as a people of backward “slaves” and warned that the United States allegedly wanted to dismember and plunder Russia’s vast resources.
Putin, 71, cautioned that Russians themselves should remember the lessons of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the civil war and the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, which he said had allowed the division of the Russian people.
“I want to underscore: We consider any interference from outside, provocations aimed at causing inter-ethnic or inter-religious conflicts as aggressive acts against our country,” Putin said.
“I want to emphasise again that any attempt to sow inter-ethnic and inter-religious discord, to split our society is a betrayal, a crime against the whole of Russia. We will not allow anyone to divide Russia.”
The West casts Putin as a dictator who has led Russia into an imperial-style land grab that has weakened Russia and forged Ukrainian statehood, while uniting the West and handing NATO a post-Cold War mission.
Putin says that the West is now failing in Ukraine and that its attempt to defeat Russia has also failed.
The Kremlin chief claims Western attempts to isolate Russia with the toughest-ever sanctions imposed on a major economy were evidence for what he believed is historic Western racism against Russians.
The West, which denies it wants to rip Russia apart, has said it wants to help Ukraine defeat Russian forces on the battlefields of Ukraine, eject Russian soldiers and punish Putin for the war.
Putin thanked Russian businessmen for evading the West’s sanctions.
“It was by combining the efforts of the state and business that we thwarted the unprecedented economic aggression of the West: its sanctions blitzkrieg failed,” Putin said.
The presidential election campaign is due to start next month and Putin is expected to run, a step that would ensure at least another six years at the helm for the former KGB spy, who has been in power since 2012, and before that, from 2000 to 2008.
Patriarch Kirill said he would pray for Putin to continue his work for the “benefit” of Russia and its people.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Putin accuses the West of trying to ‘dismember and plunder’ Russia in a ranting speech
Associated Press – November 28, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to VTB Bank Chairman Andrei Kostin during their meeting in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Nov. 27, 2023. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, in a ranting speech before a presidential election campaign, cast Moscow’s military action in Ukraine as an existential battle against purported attempts by the West to destroy Russia.
Putin, who has been in power for more than two decades and is the longest-serving Russian leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, is expected to soon declare his intention to seek another six-year term in a presidential election next March.
“We are defending the security and well-being of our people, the highest, historical right to be Russia — a strong, independent power, a country-civilization,” Putin said, accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to “dismember and plunder” Russia.
Ukraine and its Western allies have condemned the Russian action against Ukraine as an unprovoked act of aggression.
“We are now fighting for the freedom of not only Russia, but the whole world,” Putin said in a speech to participants of a meeting organized by the Russian Orthodox Church.
He denounced what he described as Western “Russophobia,” claiming that “our diversity and unity of cultures, traditions, languages, and ethnic groups simply don’t fit into the logic of Western racists and colonialists, into their cruel scheme of total depersonalization, disunity, suppression and exploitation.”
“If they can’t do it by force, they will try to sow strife,” he said, vowing to block “any outside interference, provocations with the aim of causing interethnic or interreligious conflicts as aggressive actions against our country, as an attempt to once again foment terrorism and extremism in Russia as a tool to fight us.”
Russian authorities have intensified their crackdown on dissent amid the fighting in Ukraine, arresting and imprisoning protesters and activists and silencing independent news outlets.
Putin said that the U.S.-dominated global order has become increasingly decrepit, declaring that “it is our country that is now at the forefront of creating a more equitable world order.”
“And I want to emphasize: without a sovereign, strong Russia, no lasting, stable world order is possible,” he said.
Sure, Joe Biden is pretty old: Listen, could you do what he’s doing?
Kirk Swearingen – November 27, 2023
Joe Biden Drew Angerer/Getty Images
For months, since Joe Biden’s age became the pet topic of the corporate media — you know, rather than the openly authoritarian maneuverings of the former occupant of the White House — I have said to anyone who will listen (OK, mostly to my wife, who nods agreeably) that I couldn’t do a quarter of the things that Joe Biden is doing. Honestly, not many of us could.
Not long ago on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” journalist Mike Barnicle defended Biden on the “age issue” in the same way. His comments came after host Joe Scarborough noted that Biden, beyond his normal duties as president, currently has multiple other full-time jobs:working to try to limit the conflict in the Middle East, supporting Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression, trying to stabilize relations with China. (His recent meeting with Xi Jinping reportedly went quite well.)
Here’s what Barnicle had to say about the media’s focus on Biden’s age:
Very few of us, very few in the media, really pay enough attention to the weight that this president carries each and every day. … Right now, he’s carrying two twin towers of tyranny: one in Donald Trump here domestically and the other Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, who is perhaps the biggest obstacle to a two-state solution that exists today. So, the president has that on his plate. … He has, every hour of every day, something that comes across his desk. None of us can comprehend the weight of the presidency, every hour of every day.
And as he would tell you if he were here today, it’s amazing how every country in the world looks to the United States for help, for solutions, for just almost anything you can think of. Every single day.
Read every newspaper in the country about President Biden, within the first two paragraphs they’ll point out he’s in his 80s. No kidding. He knows how old he is. You couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. Someone 45 years of age couldn’t do what he does every day. But he does it.
Scarborough pointed out that leaders and diplomats around the world admire and trust Biden and say that he fully understands the issues facing their own countries. Scarborough also commented that Biden works hard as president, while Trump notoriously spent most of his days in the White House watching cable TV until noon and often continued viewing even when he bothered to show up in the Oval Office.
Trump entered the presidency with no experience in public service and left it with next to none. He did, however, leave office with two impeachments and box after box of classified documents. One recalls that Rex Tillerson, his first secretary of state, said that getting Trump to pay attention to important issues around the world was always a challenge, partly because he was likely to listen to others and “form a view that had no basis in fact.” (We all know what Tillerson really thought of Trump.)
I understand the hand-wringing about Biden’s age. Didn’t he say he would be a one-term bridge to a better, Trumpless future? (Well, Republicans haven’t given up on their angry cult leader.) Haven’t I considered Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision to remain on the Supreme Court? Don’t I hear Bill Maher and David Axelrod unhelpfully quailing at the polls and saying that Biden can’t win because people think he’s too old? I have, and it makes me feel deeply anxious (so I stop thinking about it and go for a walk or do some push-ups).
Still, Biden is doing a lot more than I could do, and I suspect (as Barnicle said indignantly) that he’s doing a lot more than most of us could do, physically and emotionally, and he’s doing it with something we lack: a deep understanding of the deftness needed in maintaining personal relationships and the give-and-take critical to governing and diplomacy.
Biden has the experience we need in political leadership in general, especially with the Republican Party dead and gone and reduced to playacting “toughness” by elbowing House colleagues and challenging witnesses to fistfights in the Senate. Too many Republicans don’t take their oath of office seriously, and now even have to be reminded they are members of Congress. These seriously unserious people know their ideas are unpopular with the American public and thus have seriously unhinged plans for instituting minority rule permanently in any way they can.
Less than a year from now, Americans face a choice between remaining a democratic republic or morphing into a chaotic, vengefultheocracy, where millions of immigrants will be sent to holding camps before being deported (that’s the stated plan) and where women and people of color and LGBTQ folks and political “enemies” and journalists and authors and critics are targeted by those in power. For all their endless talk about the First Amendment, the MAGA insurrectionist party wants to turn it on its head, by instituting a national “religion” (Christian in name only) and silencing dissent.
Would it be ideal to have someone younger than 80? Sure it would. But that’s not reality this time around. And that imaginary 45-year-old wouldn’t have the extensive institutional and foreign policy experience that Joe Biden has. The Democratic Party has quite a few truly worthy (and perhaps even charismatic) future candidates for the highest office waiting in the wings, gaining more experience in governing and serving all the citizens in their districts or states, not just the ones who voted for them.
But those candidates will need a liberal democracy in place (i.e., basic rule of law, support for voting rights, willingness to compromise on policies and acceptance of the peaceful transfer of power) for us to find out what they can do to move us forward.
If you think 80 is really old — well, in some cases it is. People sometimes die much younger than that. In the two months since I retired, I’ve lost two close friends. But let’s list just a few older people who are still out there killing it: Paul McCartney is touring again and puts on vigorous three-hour concerts (without breaks). He turned 81 in June. Mick Jagger is still doing that chicken-strut thing he learned from Tina Turner, and celebrated his 80th birthday in July. At 97, Mel Brooks is sharper (and a lot funnier) than you or me. So is the amazing Norman Lear, at 101. Many notable scientists, philosophers, poets, artists and people in other demanding fields function at a high level, mentally and physically, deep into their lives.
Moreover, emotional well-being tends to increase in old age, as personal ambitions drop away and we allow ourselves the time to just be. (These findings do not apply to people who never grow up, by the way.) Biden stays active, eats a good diet, has social intelligence and awareness of others’ needs, has varied interests and solves complex problems daily — those, it seems, are the habits and characteristics of “super agers.” He is buoyed by a loving wife and family, because he’s earned that love. (The Beatles would approve.)
No matter how any of us may feel about Biden going for a second term at his age, it is beyond my comprehension that anyone could consider Trump, who is only a few years younger, as being more mentally or physically competent. According to his niece Mary Trump and others who know him well, has not been mentally fit for most of his life.
Physically, as a young man Trump claimed he was not fit enough to serve his country, and, by all accounts, his diet continues to be a disaster zone of highly processed food and well-done steaks served with ketchup, sometimes tossed against the wall (speaking once again to his mental state, which seems to be characterized by endless, irrational resentment).
Does Trump have any interest in or curiosity about anything beyond himself (except for a few of his favorite authoritarian leaders)? Has he ever solved a complex problem for the benefit of anyone but himself? He’s teased them endlessly but has never delivered — think those multiple, embarrassing “Infrastructure Weeks”; think “I will get it all done” to bring peace to the Middle East, fobbed off on his embarrassing son-in-law.
Trump has made it crystal clear over many years that he is vengeful and only out for himself. He now threatens those he wants to “root out” like “vermin,” jutting out his chin like his favorite historical Italian dictator and talking like his favorite German one. He also likes to fantasize that he’s a superhero.
I suspect that if it weren’t that guy the Republicans seemed determined to put up again, Biden would have determined it was safe to step aside. But it is that guy, who now has two impeachments, 91 felony indictments in four different jurisdictions, findings of liability for sexual assault and business fraud, and a history of telling lies every time he opens his mouth, including persistent whoppers about the 2020 election and about being good at business.
Liberals and progressives, broadly speaking, tend to be people who believe in reality, in facts. Whether we’re delighted about this or not, Joe Biden is running for president again. His leadership, whether you agree with every decision or not, can help us extend the American experiment and bolster democracy, as well as fight for more ways to share our nation’s prosperity and protect its cultural heritage.
The other choice will be a man who is chronologically almost as old and who seems to live in an entirely imaginary version of America in a previous era. He is mentally and emotionally unstable, to say the least, and has no interest and no ability to help anyone other than himself. Oh, and he intends to be a dictator and get revenge on his perceived enemies.
If we lose our democracy because voters tie themselves in knots about Joe Biden’s age. that will go down as ageism for the ages.
A Troubling Trump Pardon and a Link to the Kushners
A commutation for a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun had broader implications than previously known. It puts new focus on how Donald Trump would use his clemency powers in a second term.
By Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer – November 27, 2023
In April 2022, Jonathan Braun, left, and his wife, Miriam, visited a Trump resort in Florida. Mr. Braun said they ran into the former president by coincidence.
Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed.
A Staten Islander with a history of violent threats, Mr. Braun had told a rabbi who owed him money: “I am going to make you bleed.” Mr. Braun’s family had told confidants they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of prison.
At the time, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department and federal regulators, as well as New York state authorities, were still after him for his role in an entirely separate matter: his work as a predatory lender, making what judges later found were fraudulent and usurious loans to cash-strapped small businesses.
Nearly three years later, the consequences of Mr. Braun’s commutation are becoming clearer, raising new questions about how Mr. Trump intervened in criminal justice decisions and what he could do in a second term, when he would have the power to make good on his suggestions that he would free supporters convicted of storming the Capitol and possibly even to pardon himself if convicted of the federal charges he faces.
Just months after Mr. Trump freed him, Mr. Braun returned to working as a predatory lender, according to New York State’s attorney general. Two months ago, a New York state judge barred him from working in the industry. Weeks later, a federal judge, acting on a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission, imposed a nationwide ban on him.
A New York Times investigation, drawing on documents and interviews with current and former officials, and others familiar with Mr. Braun’s case, found there were even greater ramifications stemming from the commutation than previously known and revealed new details about Mr. Braun’s history and how the commutation came about.
The commutation dealt a substantial blow to an ambitious criminal investigation being led by the Justice Department’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan aimed at punishing members of the predatory lending industry who hurt small businesses. Mr. Braun and prosecutors were in negotiations over a cooperation deal in which he would be let out of prison in exchange for flipping on industry insiders and potentially even wearing a wire. But the commutation instantly destroyed the government’s leverage on Mr. Braun.The investigation into the industry, and Mr. Braun’s conduct, remains open but hampered by the lack of an insider.
At multiple levels, up to the president, the justice system appeared to fail more than once to take full account of Mr. Braun’s activities. After pleading guilty to drug charges in 2011, Mr. Braun agreed to cooperate in a continuing investigation, allowing him to stay out of prison but under supervision for nine years — a period he used to establish himself as a predatory lender, making violent threats to those who owed him money, court filings show.Since returning to predatory lending after being freed, Mr. Braun is still engaging in deceptive business tactics, regulators and customers say.
In working to secure his release, Mr. Braun’s family used a connection to Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, to try to get the matter before Mr. Trump. Jared Kushner’s White House office drafted the language used in the news release to announce commutations for Mr. Braun and others.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Braun said he did not know how his commutation came about.
“I believe God made it happen for me because I’m a good person and I was treated unfairly,” he said, adding that his supporters tried “multiple paths” to get him out of prison but he had no idea which one succeeded.
He said the 10-year sentence he received for marijuana trafficking was excessive and made him a victim of the criminal justice system. He denied any wrongdoing as a lender, and insisted that he had never talked to prosecutors about cooperating in the criminal predatory lending investigation.
He said he had never met Jared Kushner. And he said a picture from April 2022, showing him and his wife on a golf course with the former president, had nothing to do with the commutation but was a chance three-minute encounter during a visit to a Trump property in Florida for a Passover event.
“I didn’t meet him because of what happened, I just happened to be there the same time,” Mr. Braun said.
Mr. Braun’s commutation highlights what former administration officials say were major problems at the Trump White House as it considered clemency applications: the lack of rigorous vetting of applications and the sidelining of the Justice Department, which has traditionally screened candidates.
Mr. Kushner took a major role in the less structured vetting process that resulted in Mr. Braun’s commutation. The Justice Department investigators from Manhattan involved in the cooperation negotiations with Mr. Braun were never consulted.
As other convicts seeking clemency did, Mr. Braun’s family retained Alan Dershowitz, the prominent lawyer and Trump ally who worked with Jewish organizations pushing for pardons, at least one of which had received financial support from the Kushner family.
Mr. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment, had a direct line into Mr. Kushner’s office, and succeeded in helping win clemency from Mr. Trump for a number of other people. Mr. Dershowitz said he did not remember what steps he took to help Mr. Braun but said they were minimal.
Jared Kushner declined to comment, and Charles Kushner hung up when called by a reporter, as did Jacob Braun, Mr. Braun’s father. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan did not respond to messages seeking comment.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump said all pardon applications “went through a vigorous vetting and review process,” but he did not address specific questions about Mr. Braun’s commutation.
William P. Barr, a Trump attorney general who had left by the time of the Braun commutation, said when he took over the Justice Department he discovered that “there were pardons being given without any vetting by the department.”
Mr. Barr added that he told Trump aides they should at least send over names of those being considered so the department could thoroughly examine their records. While the White House Counsel’s Office tried to do so, the effort fell apart under the crush of pardon requests that poured in during the final weeks before Mr. Trump left office, according to people with direct knowledge of the process.
Mr. Trump boarding Air Force One for the last time on Jan. 20, 2021. He pardoned Mr. Braun in the final hours of his presidency. Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times
Marc Short, the chief of staff to Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, said when the vice president’s office was approached by Mr. Trump’s aides about clemency applications, it opted not to participate.
“The pardon process at the end of the administration was so unseemly it would make the Clintons blush,” Mr. Short said, referring to the final-days pardons issued by President Bill Clinton — including one to the fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife donated $450,000 to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library.
Threats and a 10-Year Sentence
Mr. Braun’s path to receiving a last-minute commutation began in 2009, when the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, raided what prosecutors said was a stash house for a marijuana smuggling ring run by Mr. Braun.
When Mr. Braun found out about the raid, he rented a car and drove 25 hours straight from Florida to an Indian reservation in upstate New York where, dressed in all black, he was smuggled into Canada, according to court filings. He then fled to Israel.
The Justice Department placed him on a special Interpol list that asked Israel to apprehend him. By 2010, he was back in New York, the Justice Department had charged him and he was behind bars.
In the days after his arrest, prosecutors asked a federal judge to keep him in jail until he went on trial. The prosecutors said Mr. Braun could not be deterred and was violent or willing to use the specter of violence against those who owed him money or might turn on him. Mr. Braun, the prosecutors said, had access to millions of dollars in untraceable cash, and was willing to do anything to stay out of prison.
The judge ordered that Mr. Braun be held pending trial. After nearly a year and a half in custody, Mr. Braun agreed to plead guilty. As part of the plea deal, he began cooperating secretly with the government’s investigations into other drug smugglers, particularly higher profile ones abroad, according to a former law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal workings of an investigation.
In exchange, the prosecutors agreed to release Mr. Braun from jail, putting him on house arrest and delaying his sentencing on the drug charges while they pursued new cases with his help. It is unclear what information Mr. Braun provided the authorities or whether it led to convictions.
Often, a cooperator can remain free for a few months by providing investigators with useful information. Sometimes, a court will hold off sentencing for a year or two as the cooperation continues. Throughout the process, federal authorities are supposed to monitor cooperators to ensure they do not break the law.
For reasons that remain unexplained, Mr. Braun was permitted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn to live relatively freely for nearly the next decade, and he was able to turn his focus to an enterprise rife with cash and threats: providing loans to struggling small businesses that often had nowhere else to turn.
Former prosecutors and defense lawyers said they had never heard of a defendant being allowed to delay sentencing for such a long period or using his freedom to engage in the conduct he did. A spokesman for the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on Mr. Braun’s case.
The business Mr. Braun entered is known by many names: the merchant cash advance industry, predatory lending or, in the view of some law enforcement officials, loan sharking.
Small businesses — like restaurants and contractors — have long faced a problem: They need cash on a daily basis to buy ingredients and supplies, and pay employees so they can operate while awaiting customer payments.
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Banks often won’t lend to them, especially small firms with troubled credit histories, providing an opening for the merchant cash advance business to offer them financing on strict, sometimes usurious, terms that include high-interest rates and exorbitant fees. (Technically, they provide cash in exchange for a percentage of future revenues, an arrangement that typically gives them access to the borrower’s books and sometimes the borrower’s bank accounts.)
An examination of court records by The Times found that between when the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn first let him out of prison in 2011 and when he reported to prison in 2020, Mr. Braun was accused of violently threatening eight people who owed him money. Another man accused Mr. Braun in a lawsuit of shoving him from the deck of a house in Staten Island in 2018.
Mr. Braun eventually reported to the federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., in 2020.Credit…Mike Segar/Reuters
Among those threatened was a real estate developer, who said Mr. Braun told him: “I will take your daughters from you,” according to court documents.
Another borrower said in an affidavit Mr. Braun told him, “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”
Over that time, companies connected to Mr. Braun made 1,900 fraudulent and illegal loans, some with interest rates greater than 1,000 percent, according to the New York State attorney general.
Even as Mr. Braun was starting to become a threatening presence, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn actually gave him more freedom. In May 2017, prosecutors and probation officers approved Mr. Braun being removed from house arrest.
Five months later, Mr. Braun threatened the rabbi of a synagogue that had borrowed money from him, according to New York’s attorney general. Mr. Braun told the rabbi he would beat and “publicly embarrass him,” adding: “I am going to make you bleed” and “I will make you suffer for every penny.”
Nearly a decade after he was first charged in the drug case, prosecutors scheduled his sentencing. Anonymous letters accusing him of violent threats were then filed on the docket of the judge overseeing his case.
Despite his cooperation with the ongoing drug investigations, the judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Mr. Braun tried to appeal, but weeks before the pandemic hit in early 2020, he reported to the federal penitentiary in Otisville, N.Y.
In prison, Mr. Braun’s legal troubles actually worsened. In June 2020, New York’s attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission, which was run by a Trump appointee at the time, sued him for his role as a predatory lender. The New York attorney general credited reporting by Bloomberg News — which in 2018 first documented Mr. Braun’s business practices and revealed last year that he had returned to predatory lending — as the impetus for the suit.
At the same time, a dogged New York Police Department detective named Joseph Nicolosi, who was assigned to work as an investigator for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, was trying to build a wide-ranging criminal case focused on predatory lenders.
The inquiry faced a big challenge. Unlike many financial fraud cases, where the government relies on documents to prove charges, federal prosecutors concluded they needed something more in this case: a turncoat to flip on higher-ups, explain the intricacies of lending agreements, say they knew what they were doing was wrong and serve as a narrator on the witness stand.
Finding that witness was proving difficult, but investigators believed they had a strong candidate sitting behind bars.
So in the fall of 2020, Mr. Nicolosi drove to Otisville to meet with Mr. Braun. Mr. Nicolosi had previously tried to flip Mr. Braun when he was free, but now Mr. Nicolosi — armed with a possible get-out-of-jail card in exchange for cooperation — had leverage over him as he sat marinating in the misery of federal prison.
At the meeting, which Mr. Braun’s lawyer attended, both sides discussed what a deal could look like.
Mr. Braun made clear he would do anything the government asked of him — including wearing a wire to record calls with his former business partners — if the government would agree not to prosecute him for his role in the lending business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ties to the Kushners
Negotiations between Mr. Braun and prosecutors stretched into the final days of Mr. Trump’s presidency. But what the prosecutors did not know was that Mr. Braun, his family and allies were pursuing an entirely different effort to help him regain his freedom through the White House’s clemency process. And among the channels they were exploiting was a tie to the Kushner family.
Mr. Braun had ties to the family of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a former White House senior adviser. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Braun, The Times found, was in the inaugural class of the Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, N.J., which was heavily funded by Jared Kushner’s family. Mr. Braun enrolled in its first freshman class, alongside Jared Kushner’s youngest sister, Nicole.
In an interview, a merchant cash advance dealer recounted how a cousin of Mr. Braun — whom Mr. Braun put in charge of his business when he went to prison and who took on a major role in trying to get him out — had told him in the wake of the commutation that Mr. Braun’s father, Jacob Braun, had sought help from Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, about getting their pleas for a commutation before Mr. Trump.
The cousin, Isaac Wolf, was said to have recounted that Charles Kushner and Jacob Braun had known each other for many years. Mr. Wolf credited the Kushner family with coming through for Mr. Braun, the merchant cash advance dealer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be publicly associated with Mr. Braun.
Others who dealt with Mr. Braun also later relayed to investigators that they had been told that the Braun family helped secure the commutation by relying on their connections to the Kushner family.
The Brauns also retained Mr. Dershowitz, a Trump ally who developed such a strong relationship with Jared Kushner that he nominated Mr. Kushner for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Middle East peace 10 days after Mr. Trump left office.
Mr. Dershowitz said Jacob Braun would call him regularly.
“Every single Friday by 3 o’clock in the afternoon: ‘Hi this is Jacob Braun, I’m so upset my son is still in prison, what can you do? It’s unfair, he’s a good boy,’” Mr. Dershowitz recounted.
Mr. Dershowitz said he handled so many clemency requests that he could not recall what he did for Mr. Braun, whom he might have talked to at the White House about his case or how much he was paid. But he said his involvement was minimal, perhaps just a phone call.
In the chaotic final weeks of the Trump presidency, the volume of clemency requests overwhelmed the White House Counsel’s Office. Requests were being fielded by numerous White House officials — and many came in through Mr. Kushner’s office.
It is unclear what type of due diligence, if any, the White House did on Mr. Braun. The New York attorney general and the F.T.C. had put out news releases about their civil actions against him in June 2020, and the suits they filed were a matter of public record. An inquiry to the Justice Department could have revealed the plea deal discussions.
Jacob Braun, Mr. Braun’s father, made contact with and retained Alan Dershowitz, seen in a 2015 photo, the prominent lawyer and Trump ally who was active in seeking clemency for convicts. Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Just hours before Mr. Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, the White House sent out the news release, written by Mr. Kushner’s office, announcing Mr. Braun’s commutation, along with similar summaries for the 143 convicts who received pardons and commutations in the final batch, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Kushner thought it was important to honor each person granted clemency with a personalized write-up, the person said.
The release misspelled Mr. Braun’s first name. And it overstated the time he had served in prison.
“Upon his release, Mr. Braun will seek employment to support his wife and children,” the release said.
The federal investigators in Manhattan learned of the commutation early that morning, immediately calling Mr. Braun’s lawyer to express their fury over how the president had undercut his own department’s investigation by removing all the leverage prosecutors had over Mr. Braun.
In the weeks that followed, investigators made another attempt to reach a cooperation deal with Mr. Braun, meeting with him in person. But no longer needing help getting out of prison, Mr. Braun essentially called their bluff, signaling that if they thought they had a case against him they should indict him. Since then, the prosecutors have brought no charges against Mr. Braun or anyone else with ties to him in the industry.
Back in Business
Just a few months after his release, Mr. Braun returned to working in the merchant cash advance business.
Amid the ongoing suits against him by state and federal regulators, he remained in a relatively behind-the-scenes role. While he would make major decisions, he would use an email account that did not include his name, his name was left off business documents and his interactions with customers were limited, according to court documents and a former merchant cash advance dealer.
But in the experience of at least one borrower who dealt with him, his business practices remained unchanged.
Dr. Robert Clinton is a North Carolina physician who during the pandemic turned his urgent care facility into a Covid testing center. He turned to merchant cash advance dealers because it took months for insurance companies and the federal government to reimburse him.
Mr. Braun’s companies made arrangements with Dr. Robert Clinton for loans and eventually pushed him to the brink of financial ruin. Credit…Kate Medley for The New York Times
Relying on similar tactics to what he was accused of employing before he went to prison, the companies affiliated with Mr. Braun withheld some of the financing they had agreed to provide Dr. Clinton but charged him interest on the full amount, imposed heavy fees with little or no warning and unilaterally withdrew money from Dr. Clinton’s bank accounts, according to court documents.
At one point, another merchant cash advance dealer who had lent money to Dr. Clinton called him in a panic to warn about Mr. Braun.
“You gotta get away from him and pay him off — we are all afraid of him — anytime Jon Braun is involved he could seize your assets, block your bank accounts,” the other merchant cash advance dealer told Dr. Clinton, in the doctor’s recounting of the conversation.
As Dr. Clinton’s finances deteriorated, he got a call from a man who claimed his name was Mike Wilson and that he was working for one of the Braun-affiliated lenders. The man told Dr. Clinton that he would send a private jet down to pick him up so he could bring expensive watches he had to New York to use as collateral for the money he owed, Dr. Clinton said.
In an apparent slip-up during conversations with Dr. Clinton at the time, the man said: Refer to me as Jon.
Dr. Clinton rejected the idea and, with help from a lawyer, Shane Heskin, sued the Braun-affiliated companies, saying they had fleeced him for over a million dollars.
A major portion of the suit was dismissed because North Carolina usury laws provided no protection for Dr. Clinton. Now, Dr. Clinton — who still owes other merchant cash advance dealers several million dollars — spends his days doing some telemedicine and the rest of his time trying to get money back from insurance companies and the federal government.
In a filing this summer, the New York attorney general said Mr. Braun, through his companies, “continues to commit usury.”
Mr. Braun continues to portray himself as a victim of an unfair criminal justice system.
“What is so bad about me?” he said in the interview with The Times. “I never hurt anybody, never did anything wrong to anybody.”
Mr. Braun and his companies put liens on Dr. Clinton’s business, leading to cascading financial problems that Dr. Clinton said cost him $1.6 million.Credit…Kate Medley for The New York Times
Matthew Cullen, Kirsten Noyes, Kitty Bennett, Alain Delaquérière and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations. More about Michael S. Schmidt
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. More about Maggie Haberman
Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for “overall excellence in White House coverage” in 2022. More about Jonathan Swan
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. More about Alan Feuer
Trump’s pardoning of a Kushner-linked drug smuggler undercut a larger DOJ investigation
Lloyd Lee – November 27, 2023
Former President Donald Trump.AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack
Donald Trump pardoned Jonathan Braun, a convicted drug smuggler, on his last day in office.
Meanwhile, the DOJ hoped to use Braun in a separate probe into the predatory-lending business.
Braun’s commutation meant the DOJ lost the leverage it needed to get him to cooperate, the NYT reported.
Donald Trump’s pardoning of a convicted marijuana smuggler with ties to the Kushner family threw a wrench in the Justice Department’s larger probe into the predatory-lending industry, The New York Times reported.
On his last day in office, Trump pardoned Jonathan Braun, a Staten Island resident who at the time was serving a 10-year prison sentence for money laundering and running an international marijuana smuggling ring.
Braun’s pardon came while Trump’s Justice Department was working out its own deal with Braun to fast-track his sentence in exchange for his cooperation with a separate DOJ probe into the predatory-lending or merchant-cash-advance industry.
In the merchant-cash-advance business, lenders offer cash-strapped borrowers, such as small businesses, financing with high interest rates and fees. These terms can often leave borrowers in a vicious cycle of debt.
Braun was convicted of drug smuggling in 2011, but a law-enforcement official told the Times under the condition of anonymity that Braun was released from jail after a year and a half in custody as part of a plea deal to cooperate with investigations into other high-profile drug smugglers.
Although he was placed under house arrest, Braun was largely able to live as a free man for reasons still unknown, the Times reported. He spent nearly the next decade leading a predatory-lending operation as a “principal” of Richmond Capital group, prosecutors said in court documents seen by Business Insider.
Prosecutors accused Braun of harassing and sending threats to his clients. Braun, for example, told one merchant not to “fuck with him” and threatened, “I know where you live. I know where mother lives,” prosecutors said.
In eight years, Braun advanced about $80 million, targeting desperate small-business owners and setting interest rates often higher than 1,000% yearly, Bloomberg reported.
In a telephone interview with the Times, Braun denied any wrongdoing as a lender.
Years after his 2011 drug-smuggling conviction, Braun was sentenced to 10 years in a New York prison despite cooperating with investigators. He began his sentence in 2020, according to the NY attorney general.
But Braun’s hand in the lending industry made him a valuable asset to the Justice Department since the US attorney’s office in Manhattan was investigating the wider predatory-lending business, the Times reported.
With Braun’s experience, the DOJ hoped to cut out a deal with the convicted smuggler by commuting his sentence in exchange for providing information on other predatory lenders and possibly wearing a wire, the Times reported.
Key to gaining his clemency, The Times reported, was Braun’s connection to the family of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump‘s husband and a senior White House advisor during the Trump Administration.
Braun was a member of the inaugural class of the Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, New Jersey, which the Kushner family funded, the report said.
As a member of the first freshman class, Braun was classmates with Jared Kushner’s youngest sister, Nicole, the Times reported.
One merchant-cash-advance dealer told the Times that Braun’s cousin, Isaac Wolf, told him Braun’s father sought help from Kushner’s father, Charles, to secure a pardon.
On his last day in office, Trump pardoned Braun, releasing a statement that misspelled Braun’s first name, despite calling for drug dealers to receive the death penalty a year later at a Pennsylvania rally.
“Every pardon application went through a vigorous vetting and review process overseen by the Office of the Pardon Attorney and various White House departments, including the counsel’s office,” a Trump spokesperson said in an email to Insider. “President Trump acted upon their recommendations that were based off each individuals’ circumstances.”
The Braun family also retained Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s legal counsel, during the impeachment proceedings in 2020.
Dershowitz told the Times that Braun’s father regularly called him, saying he was “so upset my son is still in prison” and asked what the attorney could do to help.
The lawyer told the publication he could not recall what he did for Braun but that his involvement could have just been a phone call.
“I believe God made it happen for me because I’m a good person, and I was treated unfairly,” Braun told the Times, adding that his supporters sought several avenues to get him out of prison.
A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan could not be reached for comment during the weekend.
Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US. A legacy law gives him few guardrails
Gary Fields – November 27, 2023
Surrounded by Army cadets, President Donald Trump watches the first half of the 121st Army-Navy Football Game in Michie Stadium at the United States Military Academy, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, in West Point, N.Y. Experts in constitutional law and the military say the Insurrection Act gives presidents tremendous power with few restraints. Recent statements by former President Donald Trump raise questions about how he might use it if he wins another term. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) In this Sept. 26, 1957, file photo, members of the 101st Airborne Division take up positions outside Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. The troops were on duty to enforce integration at the school. During the Civil Rights era, Presidents Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower used the law to protect activists and students desegregating schools. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state’s governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out. (AP Photo/File)President George H.W. Bush addresses the nation on May 1, 1992, from the Oval Office in Washington. George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)A fire burns out of control at the corner of 67th Street and West Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles, on April 30, 1992. On April 29, 1992, four white police officers were declared innocent in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, and Los Angeles erupted in deadly riots. George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)In this June 1, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump departs the White House to visit outside St. John’s Church, in Washington. Walking behind Trump from left are, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Experts in constitutional law and the military say the Insurrection Act gives presidents tremendous power with few restraints. Recent statements by former President Donald Trump raise questions about how he might use it if he wins another term. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states.
Calling New York City and Chicago “crime dens,” the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, “The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he said. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term, although he and his advisers have suggested they would have wide latitude to call up units. While deploying the military regularly within the country’s borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.
A law first crafted in the nation’s infancy would give Trump as commander in chief almost unfettered power to do so, military and legal experts said in a series of interviews.
The Insurrection Act allows presidents to call on reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, an authority that is not reviewable by the courts. One of its few guardrails merely requires the president to request that the participants disperse.
“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” said Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”
A spokesman for Trump’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what authority Trump might use to pursue his plans.
Congress passed the act in 1792, just four years after the Constitution was ratified. Nunn said it’s an amalgamation of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a time when there was little in the way of local law enforcement.
“It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.
It also is one of the most substantial exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military for law enforcement purposes.
Trump has spoken openly about his plans should he win the presidency, including using the military at the border and in cities struggling with violent crime. His plans also have included using the military against foreign drug cartels, a view echoed by other Republican primary candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor.
The threats have raised questions about the meaning of military oaths, presidential power and who Trump could appoint to support his approach.
Trump already has suggested he might bring back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian influence probe before being pardoned by Trump. Flynn suggested in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump could seize voting machines and order the military in some states to help rerun the election.
Attempts to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military for domestic policing would likely elicit pushback from the Pentagon, where the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Gen. Charles Q. Brown. He was one of the eight members of the Joint Chiefs who signed a memo to military personnel in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The memo emphasized the oaths they took and called the events of that day, which were intended to stop certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, “sedition and insurrection.”
Trump and his party nevertheless retain wide support among those who have served in the military. AP VoteCast, an in-depth survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide, showed that 59% of U.S. military veterans voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In the 2022 midterms, 57% of military veterans supported Republican candidates.
Presidents have issued a total of 40 proclamations invoking the law, some of those done multiple times for the same crisis, Nunn said. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times — in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington — in response to the unrest in cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
During the Civil Rights era, Presidents Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower used the law to protect activists and students desegregating schools. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state’s governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out.
George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped.
Repeated attempts to invoke the act in a new Trump presidency could put pressure on military leaders, who could face consequences for their actions even if done at the direction of the president.
Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the question is whether the military is being imaginative enough with the scenarios it has been presenting to future officers. Ambiguity, especially when force is involved, is not something military personnel are comfortable with, he said.
“There are a lot of institutional checks and balances in our country that are pretty well-developed legally, and it’ll make it hard for a president to just do something randomly out of the blue,” said O’Hanlon, who specializes in U.S. defense strategy and the use of military force. “But Trump is good at developing a semi-logical train of thought that might lead to a place where there’s enough mayhem, there’s enough violence and legal murkiness” to call in the military.
Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, the first graduate of the U.S. Military Academy to represent the congressional district that includes West Point, said he took the oath three times while he was at the school and additional times during his military career. He said there was extensive classroom focus on an officer’s responsibilities to the Constitution and the people under his or her command.
“They really hammer into us the seriousness of the oath and who it was to, and who it wasn’t to,” he said.
Ryan said he thought it was universally understood, but Jan. 6 “was deeply disturbing and a wakeup call for me.” Several veterans and active-duty military personnel were charged with crimes in connection with the assault.
While those connections were troubling, he said he thinks those who harbor similar sentiments make up a very small percentage of the military.
William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in national security law, said a military officer is not forced to follow “unlawful orders.” That could create a difficult situation for leaders whose units are called on for domestic policing, since they can face charges for taking unlawful actions.
“But there is a big thumb on the scale in favor of the president’s interpretation of whether the order is lawful,” Banks said. “You’d have a really big row to hoe and you would have a big fuss inside the military if you chose not to follow a presidential order.”
Nunn, who has suggested steps to restrict the invocation of the law, said military personnel cannot be ordered to break the law.
“Members of the military are legally obliged to disobey an unlawful order. At the same time, that is a lot to ask of the military because they are also obliged to obey orders,” he said. “And the punishment for disobeying an order that turns out to be lawful is your career is over, and you may well be going to jail for a very long time. The stakes for them are extraordinarily high.”
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price in New York, and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
