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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 24 days

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House Democrats launch probe of Trump’s dinner with oil executives | The Washington Post

House Democrats are launching an investigation into Donald Trump’s meeting with oil executives last month at his Mar-a-Lago Club, where the former president asked the executives to steer $1 billion to his 2024 campaign and promised to reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental policies.

The probe comes after The Washington Post on Thursday first reported the fundraising dinner, where Trump said that giving $1 billion would be a “deal” because of the taxation and regulation the oil companies would avoid thanks to him, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

In letters sent Monday evening, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee asked nine oil executives to provide detailed information on their companies’ participation in the meeting. The Democrats voiced concern that Trump’s request at the dinner may have been a quid pro quo and may have violated campaign finance laws, although experts say his conduct probably did not cross the threshold of being illegal.

Lawmakers sent the letters to the CEOs of Cheniere Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Continental Resources, EQT Corporation, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum and Venture Global. They also fired off a missive to the head of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying arm in Washington.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked the executives to provide the names and titles of any company representatives who attended the Mar-a-Lago dinner, copies of any materials shared with the attendees, a description of any policy proposals discussed at the event, and a list of any contributions to the Trump campaign made during or after the event.

Raskin also asked the executives to provide a copy of any draft executive orders or policy paperwork that their companies have prepared for Trump or his campaign. Politico reported that oil industry lawyers and lobbyists have drawn up executive orders for Trump to sign in a possible second term, including directives aimed at boosting natural gas exports and offshore oil drilling.

Asked about the letter, Andrea Woods, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, said in an email that the group “meets with policymakers and candidates from across the political spectrum on topics important to our industry that range from strengthening energy security to addressing persistent U.S. inflation.”

A Venture Global spokeswoman said of the meeting with Trump: “Venture Global regularly engages with government officials — both past and present — on a bipartisan basis and this meeting was no different. We would welcome a similar conversation with President Biden at any time.”

A spokesman for Cheniere Energy declined to comment on the letter. Spokespeople for the other oil companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Democrats on the Oversight Committee lack certain investigative powers because Republicans control the House. If the oil companies decline to turn over the information, Democrats will not be able to subpoena the firms, stymying their investigation.

Yet Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a vocal climate advocate who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, which wields subpoena power, has voiced interest in launching his own probe.

Trump’s comments at the dinner are “practically an invitation to ask questions about Big Oil’s political corruption and manipulation,” Whitehouse said in an emailed statement.

“Fossil fuel malfeasance will cost Americans trillions in climate damages, and the Budget Committee is looking at how to ensure the industry cannot simply buy off politicians in order to saddle taxpayers with the bill,” he added.

At the Mar-a-Lago meeting, Trump promised to immediately end the Biden administration’s freeze on permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports in a second term, according to people who attended. He also pledged to start auctioning off more leases for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and to reverse restrictions on drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.

Experts said Trump’s remarks at the dinner probably didn’t violate campaign finance laws as currently interpreted by the Federal Election Commission and the Supreme Court. They said a violation would need to involve a clear quid pro quo in which Trump promised to take a specific policy action in exchange for a specific campaign contribution.

“This alone is probably not enough to indicate the existence of a quid pro quo,” said Dan Weiner, director of elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.

Trump “was doing what candidates often do, which is saying, ‘Please give me money, and I will do the things that I know you want,’” Weiner added. “The brazenness is still quite astonishing, and it certainly flies in the face of the spirit of the law, if not the letter.”

Former Obama White House ethics adviser Norm Eisen, a Trump critic and prominent supporter of the four criminal cases against him, agreed.

“I’m not saying it’s a violation of the law,” said Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House’s first impeachment of Trump. “But it raises serious questions, and it’s a reminder of why we have those laws on the books.”

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companionsofusall · 3 months

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I kinda love the fact that Kipperlilly’s mom is a city clerk! City clerks are in charge of elections i bet she’s got a good amount of election knowledge from her parent about running one and campaigning

#my moms a city clerk! ive run elections with her before its fun!#ill be slightly sad if shes corrupt only bc i feel for my mom with the whole election fraud shit that went down #my mom hosted extra classes to show how elections were run bc of how many emails she got and like 1 person came 🥴#so like im a little sick of the election fraud conspiracy p e r s o n a l l y but they do have oversight on like business permits #and maybe licenses #and they do have access to a lot of records #i did some volunteer work in high school sorting through death certificates that were over 10+ years old #either 10 or 15. however long they have to keep records for #fantasy high junior year

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goldenphoenix4 · 4 months

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to note: this was written and filmed in 2018 and aired in 2019. the president is canonically donald trump as established when sam spoke with the apocalypse world folks. for context, jack placed a curse upon the world preventing anyone from lying.

#supernatural #spn #supernatural rewatch #dean winchester #sam winchester #crowley #donald trump #trump #i cannot believe they put this in there #in the sense that anything involving elected officials has to be screened and approved #i feel like this was an oversight #but i fully believe it

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #unions #coventry #amazon #union busting #qr codes #foxglove #one click to quit the union #labor #gwb

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americanmysticom · 2 years

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WHAT ELSE HAS BEEN MISLABELED? - CCP ELECTION INTEGRITY?

China-UN have control of GA’s Nov. 8th Election results[?]

Article Dated Nov 2 https://newsothersmiss.com/

The UN’s Carter Center controls Georgia’s Nov. 8th Election results through a treaty. [Oversight in coordination with CCP-UN Treaty?]

It will certify Stacey Abrams (D) as their Governor on Dec. 15th. [Conjecture?]

The treaty was signed on Oct. 13th by the GA Secretary of State and Atlanta’s Fulton Co. Board of Elections.

A press conference will announce it today at 10 a.m. at a special Election Board Meeting.

It is broadcast live on the Board’s video channel.;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsnu48EF5cY

https://www.youtube.com/c/FultonGovernmentTV/streams

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYH7E0jH6HxE-3KTRluH8SQ

Unfortunately, details are sealed and unavailable to the public.

According to Atlanta’s Fulton County Board of Elections (BOE).

https://www.fultoncountyga.gov/inside-fulton-county/fulton-county-departments/registration-and-elections/registration-and-elections-board

However, the four-page draft is linked here:

https://www.georgiarecord.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/DRAFT_MOU_TCC-PRB-Fulton-Oct03-22-2-1.pdf

Also Here; https://icedrive.net/s/g95XTVC649PYBhD6T4NYQAWbRy4C

See Also; COURT COMBAT COAST TO COAST! | The Prather Brief Ep. 8 American Media Periscope Published November 2, 2022

https://rumble.com/v1r63ti-court-combat-coast-to-coast-the-prather-brief-ep.-8.html

https://warroom.org/2022/10/24/exclusive-chinese-communist-party-tied-group-to-run-midterm-election-observer-program-in-swing-states/

https://www.cartercenter.org/countries/china.html

https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/nondatabase/electionpage.html

#CCP associated election oversight in US?#CCP election integrety?#UNITED FRONT MAGIC ELECTION WEAPON

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psychotrenny · 1 month

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Lancer is a funny because of how much it insists that Union is this flawed but ultimately benevolent institution that's well on the path to improvement, a "utopia in progress" as they love to say, when like they casually reveal so many things about it that show Union as rotten to the fucking core. Like as much as Lancer fans like to go on and on about how it's an imperfect society that needs to make compromises, there's so much awful shit about Union that just seems pointless or easily avoidable.

And like part of this is the creator's politics; they're social democrats so it's not surprising that Space Sweden is their idea of a society that, if not the best we could possibly achieve, is at least the best we can do for the foreseeable future. As a Marxist-Leninist it's only natural that I'd have a condemnatory view of such a society just as I do for real Social Democracies; my idea of an achievably "good" society is just fundamentally different from that of the creators But like Lancer is also full of little details that just seem fucked up and awful even from the values and viewpoint of Social Democracy. Like stuff that's just as bad, if not worse, than a lot of sci-fi Dystopias. Like why the fuck does Union have a CIA that's run by a group of super-computers with the actual elected legislature having an advisory role but no actual jurisdiction and this fact being kept secret from the vast majority of the populace? Not much of a democracy if one of the most powerful institutions in the entire political body is free from any kind of democratic or even fucking human oversight while most people aren't even allowed to have an opinion on this because they aren't allowed to know about it. Or what about the caste of Janissary diplomats (like was it really necessary to take children and train them like they're the jedi of interplanetary relations) who come with customised computer slaves. Like yeah don't forget about the fucking SCP computer slavery thing, which is completely fine (except for the times it isn't I guess). Like it's basically the weirdest and most uncomfortable part of Star War's setting imported near whole-cloth only like the regular mindwipes are justified because otherwise they'll full Durandal and you don't want that do you? Look how happy and content they are being forced to think like humans while acting as loyal servants. Btw Union is somehow even less denazified than West Germany. Significantly so. They literally gave Hitler Corp. (a fucking weapons manufacturer so powerful they call it a "corpro-state"!) a seat at the UN. While allowing their Blue Helmets to keep using those Nazi-made weapons. And like Third Comm is repeatedly described as doing basically the same shit that Second Comm did but with more "Care" or whatever so don't worry it's fine now.

Like I can just keep going on and on like I'm not making this up this isn't some like weird expansion this is all from the core rulebook. I get that there has to be conflict and tension but like why did they need to make their ostensible good guys so fucking awful like these are the people you're meant to feel good about fighting for why did you need to fill them with the sort of details you'd see in some cautionary dystopia? And like why do actual people keep defending these guys? Like once you get down to it Union manages to be less Space Sweden and more* "The Ottoman Empire with Pronouns"

*to borrow a phrase coined by a mate while we were talking about this

#lancer

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healingheartdogs · 1 year

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Actually incredibly concerning and scary how much I am NOT seeing people talk about the RESTRICT outside of TikTok because they're being successfully distracted by our politicians framing this as just a TikTok ban. If you have not read this bill yet I am begging you to do so and then contact your representatives about it. This is a gross overreach by our government and clearly violates the first amendment in this country. If this bill passes it will give our government free reign to censor or ban any internet service with over a million users -- including things like video games, not just apps like TikTok -- with NO OVERSIGHT AT ALL. Punishments for trying to get around these bans and censors can be up to a million dollars or UP TO 20 YEARS IN PRISON.

Seriously, read this bill, spread information to your circles, and HARASS YOUR REPS ABOUT THIS. Call them up and tell them if they support this bill you will actively campaign for their competition in the next election. If you don't like phone calls, email them. If you don't like typing emails then get ChatGPT to make one up for you and all you have to do is send it. This is TIME SENSITIVE. We need to make as much noise about this as possible ASAP. This bill is a direct attack on the first amendment and on FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. This is SCARY.

This is a bipartisan issue that will affect all of us. It doesn't matter what political party you stand for, both Dems and Repubs are supporting this violation of our rights and censorship of the internet. Meta is hardcore lobbying for this bill and politicians on both sides are happily taking their bribes to fuck us over. Make noise about it, please.

#tiktok #tiktok ban #restrict act #politics #ndr #not dog related

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gwydionmisha · 1 year

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This win was essential for saving democracy and a huge relief.

#The Supreme Court #Judicial Oversight #Elections #North Carolina #News

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lizardsfromspace · 2 months

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The thing about the "the FCC can't regulate cable" thing is that it feels like a issue of bureaucratic oversight, but it's one of basic jurisdiction. They can't just fix a loophole, on a base level their authority is vested in regulating a finite resource - airwaves - in the public interest.

Also I, uh, think it'd be bad to give a government agency the ability to censor all content? Like it may "fix Fox News" but the next Republican President could just reverse that and censor MSNBC and CNN instead. That's the base problem with proposals for "misinformation laws", a mistaken assumption that the agencies involved would be neutral and objective, and forgetting that any law that says "it's illegal to go on TV and say Biden stole the election" is just four to eight years away from being a law that says "it's illegal to go on TV and say Biden didn't steal the election"

#politics #uspol

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princesscas · 2 years

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“The gays aren’t gonna get banned!”

That is a real comment I just read on a post about the Tiffany G situation regarding this years OTW election.

It astonishes me to this very day that there are people who aren’t aware of the history of fandom purges. Like hello?? It’s happened with FF.net twice, once in 2002 and again in 2012. All NC-17 works were removed without warning because they were deemed as “too mature.”

The reactions to Tiffany G’s comments are not unjustified. People who have lived through purges know what it’s like to loose thousands of fanworks within a blink of an eye. That’s entirely why AO3 was created, to give authors a place to post without the fear of removal. Fandom was kickstarted by adult women, that is a fact.

Censorship is not cut and dry. It has many oversights, like determining what is considered “bad.” Who’s to say works containing underage wouldn’t also fall under age difference? Oh, you don’t like non-con? Well, it was nice knowing A/B/O…

Tagging is a godsend, and AO3’s system works as intended. Exclude tags with things you find uncomfortable, but most of all, don’t read things you don’t like.

I’m gonna end this mini rant on one major point: fictional, written characters are not the same as real life children being harmed.

#ao3 #otw #otw elections #fandom things #mandy talks and stuff

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie took aim at former President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, during the former New Jersey Governor’s campaign launch Tuesday, saying the “grift from this family is breathtaking.”

“The grift from this family is breathtaking,” Christie said at a New Hampshire town hall. “It’s breathtaking. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Kushner walk out of the White House, and months later get $2 billion from the Saudis.”

Christie was pointing to the $2 billion investment made by the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, into Kushner’s investment firm A Fin Management, LLC (Affinity) in 2021. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform announced a probe into the investment last year to determine whether Kushner improperly used his influence as a government official to secure the investment.

Kushner served in his father-in law’s administration as an adviser who was tasked with policy in the Middle East. Kushner incorporated Affinity in Delaware in January 2021, shortly after former President Trump left office. Six months later, he received the $2 billion investment, according to the House committee.

“You think it’s because he’s some kind of investing genius? Or do you think it’s because he was sitting next to the President of the United States for four years doing favors for the Saudis?” Christie asked on Tuesday. “That’s your money. That’s your money he stole and gave it to his family. You know what that makes us? A banana republic.”

Christie, who has been a vocal critic of former President Trump over the last year, did not hold back on his attacks on his former friend at the town hall, saying a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog is not a leader,” and likening him to Voldemort, the villain in the “Harry Potter” series.

Christie entered the growing field of Republican presidential candidates after he filed paperwork Tuesday, but former President Trump remains the front-runner. In a CNN poll last month, just 2% of Republican-leaning voters chose Christie.

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