It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
As could links to the current State of Terror that we are facing with our new Security States. Those in power who claim that we are under attack and thus must give up our civil liberties for the good of the State.
Now while this V guy is kinda of violent, he is the opposite of our poor Windsor Smith in 1984. Servility or Liberty. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Thomas Jefferson
At the center of the story is the mysterious V, (Hugo Weaving, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings) a Guy Fawkes mask wearing anarchist who saves a woman named Evey from being raped by state police. After their chance encounter, V inspires her to join his crusade to restore civil liberties through acts of terrorism.
"It's less of a message and more of a question which is 'when if ever is violence justified'? And you can say that there are certain situations when it is justified," Natalie Portman, who plays Evey, told eTalk.
Vendetta explores the idea that one person's terrorist may be another person's freedom fighter.
The debate over the politics of the deedversus mass mobilizations will be taken up again as they did over the Black Bloc.Already some anarchists are planning to leaflet the movie to use it as a chance to clarify that Anarchy really is. Good on them. It will help counter the Anarchist as Terrorist mythology.
THE TERROR LAST TIME New Yorker, United States -5 Mar 2006 ... When the war was over, his politics shifted. ... Merely by virtue of what the Haymarket eight had said and written about anarchism and dynamite, they were ...
Remember when you were young How the hero was never hung Always got away Remember how the man Used to leave you empty handed Always, always let you down If you ever change your mind About leaving it all behind Remember, remember, today
Don't you worry 'bout what you've done Don't feel sorry 'bout the way it's gone
Remember when you were small How people seemed so tall Always had their way Remember your ma and pa Just wishing for movie stardom Always, always playing a part If you ever feel so sad And the whole world is driving you mad Remember, remember today
Remember Tribute to V for Vendetta using Remember by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band
These pages are from the confessions of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes is the most well known of the men who planned to blow up King James I and the Parliament in 1605.
In the years after England split away from the Catholic Church, most English monarchs were not very tolerant of Catholics living in England. James I was a Protestant king and English Catholics despaired of any return to the old religion. A small group decided to blow up both King and Parliament with gunpowder. They planned to place James' daughter Elizabeth ON the throne.They hoped she would marry a Catholic prince AND England would ONCE again be a Catholic country.
The king 's spies discovered the plot. Fawkes was found on the night of 4th/5th November 1605 in the cellars under the Palace of Westminster, where Parliament was due to meet. He had 36 barrels of gunpowder. On the following days, he confessed to the plot and named the others involved.
Fawkes signed 2 confessions - one after torture and another 8 days later. The contrast between them is remarkable. The first document shown here is a page from his confession under torture. His weak and shaky signature ' Guido' can faintly be made out. The second document is from a confession signed later in a steadier hand 'Guido Fawkes'.
Fawkes and the other plotters were executed on 30 and 31 January 1606. Ever since then, every 5th of November there have been firework displays and bonfires to remember the 'Gunpowder Plot '.
English playwrights and the theater loved the dramatic images of Guy Fawkes and the celebration of the Fifth of November. Bonfires...the plot itself and then there is Guy. It is hoped that the study of Fawkes as he appears from play to play throughout the centuries will provide us with insights into how the history of the plot and its celebrations evolved through time. See what you find in these works. They are certainly quite enjoyable and fun in and of themselves.
Security is the chief enemy of mortals.
William Shakespeare
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security. Benjamin Franklin
The seedy history behind gerrymandering and the fight to preserve white power Mia Brett October 22, 2021 FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators rally in front of the Supreme court before oral arguments on Benisek v. Lamone, a redistricting case on whether Democratic lawmakers in Maryland unlawfully drew a congressional district in a way that would prevent a Republican candidate from winning, in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2018.
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
Maps are being redrawn all over the country in response to last year's census. Unfortunately, the process currently leaves a lot of room for partisan gerrymandering. It is the first time since the passage of the Voting Rights Act that district maps will be drawn without the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act for many states.
A 2019 Supreme Court case also makes it impossible to bring gerrymander cases to federal courts on the basis of partisanship. Luckily some states have passed redistricting reforms since the last census. Others have divided legislatures where partisan abuse is less likely. But there are states that will attempt to draw maps in blatantly partisan ways, particularly to protect Republican political power.
The practice of manipulating voting districts for political power — ie, gerrymandering — wasn't invented in the US but it's hard to say we didn't perfect it. In 18th-century Britain, districts called "rotten boroughs" were drawn with few voters to ensure certain representatives were elected to Parliament. Gerrymandered districts have existed since the inception of US congressional districts, but initially the districts were still drawn in relatively normal ways.
The term "gerrymander" was coined after an 1812 Massachusetts state senate district map was drawn and signed into law by then Governor Elbridge Gerry. The map drew a long thin district that sliced up Essex County, which usually voted for the Federalist Party, in order to help the Democratic-Republicans. As a result, a county that had elected five Federalist representatives elected three Democratic-Republicans and only two Federalists. Federalists won over 1,500 more votes statewide but elected only 11 representatives while Democratic-Republicans elected 29. Ultimately, the extreme district map caused a backlash and Federalists soon regained power and redrew the district map.
The bill was seen as a partisan vendetta by many Federalists and when a satirical cartoon was drawn Elbridge Gerry's name was used to describe the salamander-like monster. Thus the term "gerrymander" was born. While obviously not the first time districts were drawn in a way to consolidate political power, the Massachusetts map was the first example of a district drawn in a clearly ridiculous way.
In 1842, Congress passed the Apportionment Act. It required districts to be geographically contiguous but there's little evidence it was enforced. Once Black men gained the right to vote, the use of gerrymandering grew with a vengeance. States redrew their maps more often after the Civil War to advantage the Republican and the Democratic parties. Democrat-controlled Ohio redrew its congressional districts six times between 1878 and 1890 to ensure Democrats were in control of the state. In 1888, Pennsylvania redrew its map so Republicans could retain their majority in the state House.
After the Civil War, gerrymandering not only caused partisan results but was used to disenfranchise Black voters, specifically as a response to the Black political power gained during reconstruction. In 1876, a Texas newspaper commented that the racist gerrymanders disenfranchised Black voters by "indirection." Mississippi created a "shoestring district" and South Carolina drew a "boa constrictor" district in order to disenfranchise Black voters. This "boa constrictor" district linked every Black precinct that could be connected by even the smallest land continuity. By isolating Black voters , the violent intimidation or outright fraud needed to disenfranchise them became much easier. Along with poll taxes, literacy tests and all-white primaries, racist gerrymanders successfully disenfranchised Black voters in the South until the civil rights movement.
In the 1960s, the Supreme Court issued a number of opinions dubbed the "redistricting revolution" to address gerrymandered districts. In 1960, the court found that district lines drawn with the intention of disenfranchising Black voters violated the 15th Amendment in Gomillion v. Lightfoot. Justice Frankfurter's opinion held that an Alabama act that created a Tuskegee district that excluded nearly all Black voters effectively denied people their vote to vote on the basis of race. Overturning the 1946 decision Colegrove v. Green, which held that malapportioned congressional districts were not the purview of the federal judiciary, Baker v. Carr in 1962 held that redistricting issues could be brought to federal courts under the 14th amendment. Two years later the Supreme Court decided two cases, Wesberry v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims, requiring that electoral districts be established based on equal population and the principle of "one person, one vote."
While important precedent that forced maps to be redrawn, the requirement of uniform population did not stop districts from being drawn in bizarre shapes to protect partisan power. In 1993, in Shaw v. Reno, the Supreme Court held that a bizarrely shaped district is strongly indicative of "racial intent" and therefore will be struck down for violating the Equal Protection Clause if no other reason for the shape can be given. While certainly a step in the right direction, Shaw didn't exactly end the practice of drawing ridiculously shaped districts. Additionally, Shelby v. Holder will likely make it easier to get racist gerrymanders into effect because preclearance is no longer required.
In 2019, the Supreme Court dealt a huge blow to efforts at fixing partisan gerrymandering. In Rucho v. Common Cause the court held that partisan gerrymandering is not an issue for federal courts to consider and is only the purview of state courts or legislative action. Under the 2017 decision Cooper v. Harris, cases can bring issues of racist gerrymandering to the federal court system, but they have to prove race was the predominant factor in drawing the district and that the state didn't have a compelling state interest, like protecting minority voting rights at which time race can be a consideration.
Two weeks ago, Texas released a redistricting map that prompted a lawsuit alleging intentional discrimination against Hispanic voters. Since the lawsuit concerns racist gerrymandering and not just partisanship, it can be brought in federal court. But it's not yet clear how it will be received. Under the proposed Freedom to Vote Act, this type of gerrymandering would not be allowed and neutral redistricting standards would be imposed. The act also would provide more power to courts to adjudicate issues with gerrymandering more quickly.
Unfortunately in the most recent Senate vote, the bill was blocked in a 51-49 vote because Democrats don't have enough votes to override the filibuster. Republicans are blocking the bill but the current redistricting reform is actually based on a 30-year-old Republican proposal. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is still promising to fight for the bill but we likely will continue to need West Virginia Senator Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema to agree to filibuster reform if we have any hope of passing the legislation. Mia Brett, PhD, is a legal historian. She lives with her gorgeous dog, Tchotchke. You can find her @queenmab87
Saturday, October 10, 2020
'Watchmen' Creator Alan Moore: Superhero Movies May Have Contributed To Trump's Rise
Alan Moore — the famed British co- creator of the graphic novels “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” and writer of dozens of DC and Marvel comics — offered a blistering critique of comics and argued that superhero movies may very well have contributed to the rise of Donald Trump and Brexit.
“I’m not so interested in comics anymore,” Moore said in a rare interview in Deadline on Friday. He is promoting his upcoming film, “The Show,” a nightmarish tale set in Northampton, England.
Moore retired from writing comics in 2018 after the release of the final issue of the “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series, which inspired the 2003 Sean Connery film of the same name.
“I had been doing comics for 40-something years when I finally retired,” Moore said. “When I entered the comics industry, the big attraction was that this was a medium that was vulgar. It had been created to entertain working-class people, particularly children. The way that the industry has changed, it’s ‘graphic novels’ now. It’s entirely priced for an audience of middle-class people. I have nothing against middle-class people, but it wasn’t meant to be a medium for middle-aged hobbyists. It was meant to be a medium for people who haven’t got much money.”
Moore added that mainstream audiences today tend to equate comics with superhero films, much to his displeasure. Moore slowly transitioned away from superhero stories over the course of his career, partly because of his negative experience working with DC, which he said “managed to successfully swindle” him through constricting contracts after the publication of “Watchmen” in the 1980s.
“I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton ‘Batman’ film,” Moore told Deadline. “They have blighted cinema and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous; it was infantilizing the population.”
Moore — who added that the best version of “Batman” in his opinion was the campy 1966 Adam West TV show, “which didn’t take it at all seriously” — speculated that an overabundance of superhero cinema may even have led to the current political state of the world.
“This may be entirely coincidence, but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest-grossing films were superhero movies,” Moore said. “Not to say that one causes the other, but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing — a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions.”
Alan Moore Gives Rare Interview:
‘Watchmen’ Creator Talks New Project ‘The Show’, How Superhero Movies Have “Blighted Culture” & Why He Wants Nothing To Do With Comics
EXCLUSIVE: As the creator of Watchmen, V For Vendetta and many more celebrated comic series, Alan Moore is one of the industry’s biggest names, but his frosty relationship with the film adaptations of his works has been well documented. After some very public dissatisfaction with previous endeavours (see The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen), he now refuses to let his name be linked with any such projects, even declining to profit from the big-screen incarnations, a decision that he estimates has cost him millions.
Deadline
Now, Moore is attempting to break into the film business on his own terms with original project The Show. Starring Tom Burke and directed by Mitch Jenkins, the fantastical adventure, set in Moore’s hometown of Northampton, follows a man’s search for a stolen artefact, a journey that leads him into a surreal world of crime and mystery.
Moore, who tends to duck the limelight, gave a rare interview to Deadline this week to discuss The Show, which has been something of a passion project for the writer. Him and his producers have kept it independent every step of the way, insisting on retaining creative control and rights to their own IP. After making several shorts film and now this feature, Moore has plans for a TV series based on the same characters and has already worked out 4-5 seasons worth of material, he tells us.
I also took the chance to ask him about retiring from comics in 2018, which his followers will be disappointed to hear he seems firmly set on, as well as his take on the current world of blockbuster superhero films, which he has been an inadvertent factor in. Safe to say, he is not a fan. He’s also not a fan of the current UK or U.S. political regimes, particularly Donald Trump, or “National Socialist satsuma”, as Moore refers to him.
The Show would have premiered at SXSW earlier this year, but following the Austin event’s cancellation it is headed to Spanish genre festival Sitges where it will debut online October 8 before a physical screening on October 12. Protagonist Pictures is handling world sales.
DEADLINE: Hi Alan, what’s your lockdown experience in Northampton been like?
ALAN MOORE: Me and my wife Melinda are still effectively living in late February – it’s about the same temperature. We are ignoring all advice from the government because we don’t think they have our best interests at heart, we’re just doing what we think is the most sensible thing, we’re maintaining distancing, having our stuff delivered. We haven’t seen or touched anybody in the last six months.
On the other hand, we’re finding that we’re closer to people even though we haven’t seen them in the flesh for ages. We’re spending a lot more time calling up and reading stories to our grandchildren, which is a lot of fun. Things that we didn’t find the time for back when the world was trundling ahead. Yes we miss everybody, but at the same time I can see different sorts of bonds forming. We will keep informed by listening to proper doctor and scientists.
DEADLINE: You retired from comics after finishing The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2018, any thoughts on getting back in the saddle?
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Titan Books
MOORE: I’m not so interested in comics anymore, I don’t want anything to do with them.
I had been doing comics for 40-something years when I finally retired. When I entered the comics industry, the big attraction was that this was a medium that was vulgar, it had been created to entertain working class people, particularly children. The way that the industry has changed, it’s ‘graphic novels’ now, it’s entirely priced for an audience of middle class people. I have nothing against middle class people but it wasn’t meant to be a medium for middle aged hobbyists. It was meant to be a medium for people who haven’t got much money.
Most people equate comics with superhero movies now. That adds another layer of difficulty for me. I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton Batman film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population.
This may be entirely coincidence but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the UK voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest grossing films were superhero movies. Not to say that one causes the other but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing – a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions.
DEADLINE: You said you feel responsible for how comics have changed, why?
MOORE: It was largely my work that attracted an adult audience, it was the way that was commercialized by the comics industry, there were tons of headlines saying that comics had ‘grown up’. But other than a couple of particular individual comics they really hadn’t.
This thing happened with graphic novels in the 1980s. People wanted to carry on reading comics as they always had, and they could now do it in public and still feel sophisticated because they weren’t reading a children’s comic, it wasn’t seen as subnormal. You didn’t get the huge advances in adult comic books that I was thinking we might have. As witnessed by the endless superhero films…
DEADLINE: What’s your take on the comics industry now?
MOORE: I doubt the major companies will be coming out of lockdown in any shape at all. The mainstream comics industry is about 80 years old and it has lots of pre-existing health conditions. It wasn’t looking that great before COVID happened.
Most of our entertainment industries have been a bit top heavy for a while. The huge corporations, business interests, have so much money they can produce these gigantic blockbusters of one sort or another that will dominate their markets. I can see that changing, and perhaps for the better. It’s too early to make optimistic predictions but you might hope that the bigger interests will find it more difficult to manoeuvre in this new landscape, whereas the smaller independent concerns might find that they are a bit more adapted. These times might be an opportunity for genuinely radical and new voices to come to the fore in the absence of yesteryear.
DEADLINE: The economic realties, and lack of support for the arts, could hamper that.
MOORE: That is undeniable. I am talking in the long-term. There is going to be an awful lot of economic pain for everybody before this is over. I’m not even sure it ever will technically be over, until we’ve reached a better stage of equilibrium, whatever that turns out to be. When that was attained I hope we might see a very different landscape culturally.
DEADLINE: Do you watch no superhero movies at all? What about something a bit offbeat, like Joker? You wrote a key Batman comic book…
MOORE: Oh christ no I don’t watch any of them. All of these characters have been stolen from their original creators, all of them. They have a long line of ghosts standing behind them. In the case of Marvel films, Jack Kirby [the Marvel artist and writer]. I have no interest in superheroes, they were a thing that was invented in the late 1930s for children, and they are perfectly good as children’s entertainment. But if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque.
Batman: The Killing Joke DC Comics
I’ve been told the Joker film wouldn’t exist without my Joker story (1988’s Batman: The Killing Joke), but three months after I’d written that I was disowning it, it was far too violent – it was Batman for christ’s sake, it’s a guy dressed as a bat. Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously. We have a kind of superhero character in The Show but if we get the chance to develop them more then people will be able to see all of the characters have quite unusual aspects to them.
DEADLINE: Hasn’t cinema always been a form of escapism, to an extent?
MOORE: Sometimes it was, all art-forms are potentially. But they can be used for something other than escapism. Think of all the films that have really challenged assumptions, films that have been difficult to take on board, disturbing in their messages. The same goes for literature. But these superhero films are too often escapism.
With regards to The Show, I think it’s an interesting case in point. I am known, perhaps a bit unfairly, for creating dystopias – I think I’ve done one or two but the rest are just my reflections on the world as I see it. With The Show, it could very well be argued that it is actually set in a dystopia, in that Northampton is the first British town in something like 35 years to collapse into an economic blackhole. We went into special measures in the early months of 2018. We can only afford skeleton services. They’re now talking about breaking it up into two different voting areas, which I imagine will make it Conservative until the end of time. There are a lot of failed social visions, mismanagement, but the imaginary life of the town… it has odd little pockets of surrealism and bizarreness that are still there, same as they’ve ever been, that are coming to the fore as Northampton’s waking reality has been so disjointed. The Show is an observed fantasy on a number of levels, but an awful lot of it is true. The town really is that odd-looking.
DEADLINE: In retirement, are you still creating, do you still write?
MOORE: I’ve only retired from comics. I’m finishing off a book of magic now. It’s been stalled for a while but I’m also working on an opera about John Dee with [musician] Howard Gray. I’ve got some short stories coming out. And I’ve also been thinking a lot about what we want to do after The Show feature film. We hope that it’s enjoyable as a thing in itself, but to some degree it could be seen as an incredibly elaborate pilot episode, we think there’s quite an interesting story that we could develop out of it as a TV series, which would imaginatively be called The Show.
‘The Show’ Protagonist Pictures
I’ve worked out about four-five seasons of potential episodes. We’re showing that around to people to see how it goes, if there should be any interest I am prepared to launch myself into that. We’re not asking for a huge amount of money we’re just asking for control over the work and ownership over the work, if that is something people are prepared to give us we have no problem with people making money out of it. What we have got a problem with is us losing our rights to the ownership of the material, and having the work interfered with in any way.
DEADLINE: It sounds like the kind of thing Netflix might be interested in, but retaining your IP might be an issue…
MOORE: We shall see. There are options. All we need is to own our IP. But that’s why it has taken us so long to get to the feature film stage, and to get the five short films made previously. I really don’t have an interest in writing for movies or television per se, it has to be on my terms, which I think are fair ones. I’ve got no problem with other people making money from those works.
DEADLINE: Fair to say you’ve earned that right.
MOORE: I think so.
DEADLINE: Why make the shorts first?
MOORE: When we were trying to get this made some people wanted us to make a short film that would later be made into a feature film. As soon as it was announced that I was doing any sort of film there was suddenly a lot of interest in it. People said it could be a short that turned into a feature and a TV series, like This Is England. I realised without changing it I could open up the story, it could become a much bigger narrative.
DEADLINE: And you used the shorts to attract the feature finance?
MOORE: The BFI nobly gave us just over £1m if we could get someone to match that. It went on for a few years with various partners getting involved but not being able to work out the financial details. I was coming to the end of my rope and then we heard the financing was in place and we had something like £3m and could go ahead and make the film in November 2018.
We started on schedule, but I noticed there seemed to be a lot of the investors gathering around Mitch [Jenkins, director] in the early days of the film. When we finally got it finished we had a modest wrap party at a local restaurant, I thought it was a good-looking film for £3m, and then Mitch said, ‘we didn’t do that for £3m’… apparently just before the film was due to start soothing, some of the investors pulled out, they said it would take another year or two to raise the money again but someone said if I heard this had happened they would probably never see me again. They gave Mitch a chance to make it for £1m but were breathing down his neck to make sure he met all the deadlines. I believe we got it shot for £900,000, I don’t think it looks like a £900,000 movie…
DEADLINE: It certainly doesn’t. Did you have to make compromises?
MOORE: There was one scene that was removed because there wasn’t time for it. There might have been small changes but not really significantly. The main good fortune was that we had Northampton at our disposal, perhaps the only good thing about having the town on its knees is that the council are absolutely desperate for anything that will draw any kind of financial attention to this collapsed hellhole. They gave us the freedom of the town.
DEADLINE: What are your hopes for the film?
MOORE: I hope people will enjoy it and will be interested enough to see how the story will evolve in a TV series. I hope that all the people who worked on the film, including the brilliant actors, get the recognition. But all of that is in the lap of the gods.
DEADLINE: I’m a huge fan of Tom Burke…
MOORE: Absolutely, he’s terrific, he brought such a lot to the character and he’s a terrific guy as well. I particularly enjoyed my scene with Tom.
DEADLINE: How long did it take you to get into that makeup? [See below]
MOORE: Oh, hours. Our makeup designer was an absolute genius, she did it as quickly as anybody could
Well a year after I first blogged excitedly about V for Vendata the Movie it will be released March 17. I hope it can live up to the truly anarchist tale the comic was. But wait this is Hollywood after all. Hollywood under Bush. Yep I think it might just make the transistion from comic to big screen with all its anarchist irony.
Trumps had role in fraud scheme, former exec testifies at company's trial
Graham Kates
Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg testified in court Thursday, describing how Donald Trump and two of his children allegedly participated in a scheme to defraud tax authorities.
Weisselberg said Donald Trump, or at times Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr., signed checks to pay up to $100,000 for private school tuition for Weisselberg's grandchildren. Weisselberg said he then instructed the company's controller to deduct the $100,000 from his salary, allowing him to report a smaller income. Copies of some of the checks signed by the Trumps have been shown in court.
Weisselberg said the first time Trump signed a tuition check, Weisselberg told him, "Don't forget, I'm going to pay you back for this." The payback, he said, was the salary reduction.
Two Trump Organization entities and Weisselberg are accused of more than a dozen counts of fraud and tax evasion. Weisselberg entered a guilty plea in August, admitting to charges filed by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office accusing him of receiving more than $1.7 million in untaxed compensation.
Weisselberg, who is still on the Trump Organization's payroll, has over the first two days of testimony described a litany of benefits he and several other executives received for which he said their salaries were similarly reduced to avoid paying taxes.
He said for himself and several other executives, the salary reductions were then mitigated by hefty bonus checks paid to the executives as if they were independent contractors for Trump Organization entities.
"Donald Trump always wanted to sign the bonus checks" before he became president in 2017, Weisselberg said.
"We were going through a company-wide cleanup process, making sure that since Mr. Trump was now president, everything was being done properly," Weisselberg said.
Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg testifies at the company's trial on fraud charges in New York. / Credit: Jane Rosenberg
Defense attorney Alan Futerfas later asked Weisselberg, "(Trump) didn't authorize you to commit tax fraud did he?"
"Of course not," Weisselberg replied.
Weisselberg said the funds delivered as independent contractor payments were used to set up Keogh retirement plans, tax-deferred pension accounts designed for people who are self-employed.
Defense attorneys for the Trump Organization have said the company did nothing wrong, and laid the scheme squarely at Weisselberg's feet, saying he hid the salary reductions and independent contractor payments from the Trumps.
Futerfas asked Weisselberg, "What human being did you scheme with?"
Weisselberg replied, "Jeff McConney," referring to the company's controller, who previously testified during the trial. McConney was granted immunity in exchange for grand jury testimony in the case, and blamed Weisselberg for the scheme.
Futerfas continued with questions seeking to differentiate the Trumps from the executives who worked beneath them.
"Did you conspire with any member of the Trump family?" Futerfas asked.
"No," Weisselberg replied.
"Did you scheme with Jeff McConney?" Futerfas asked.
"Yes," Weisselberg replied.
"Did you scheme with any member of the Trump family?" Futerfas asked.
"No," Weisselberg replied.
Later, Futerfas asked, "Aside from family members, you were among the most trusted people they knew. Is that right?"
"Correct," Weisselberg replied.
Soon after, Futerfas asked, "Are you embarrassed about what you did?"
Choking up, Weisselberg replied, "More than you can imagine."
Earlier Thursday, Weisselberg said under questioning by a prosecutor that other executives at the company were active participants in, and beneficiaries of, similar salary and bonus arrangements.
Weisselberg described arranging for his son Barry's family to live in a newly-renovated apartment on New York's tony Central Park South. He said the location was convenient for Barry Weisselberg's job as manager of an ice rink and carousel run by the Trump Organization in Central Park. Allen Weisselberg said his son paid $500 out of pocket and $500 from his salary per month to rent the apartment, which he described as a "below market" rate.
At the time, Allen Weisselberg and his wife lived in an $8,200 per month company-owned apartment under a lease agreement signed by Donald Trump himself.
Allen Weisselberg said he provided his son's tax paperwork for preparation to the outside accountant who was in charge of the entire Trump Organization's annual tax account. Allen Weisselberg said his son's reported salary at the time "was probably lower than it should have been."
Peter Stambleck, an attorney for Barry Weisselberg, declined to comment.
Ex-Trump Organization CFO says Trump family was in the dark on tax fraud scheme
Adam Reiss and Tom Winter and Chloe Atkins and Dareh Gregorian
Former President Donald Trump and his two eldest sons signed the checks the Trump Organization's chief financial officer used to cheat on his taxes, but they didn't know it was fraud, the ex-CFO testified Thursday.
Allen Weisselberg, 75, testified for a second day in the criminal trial of Trump's family business in New York City that the only other person in the company who knew about the tax fraud scheme was its controller, Jeffrey McConney.
Asked by Trump lawyer Alan Futerfas in cross-examination whether Trump or anyone else in the company gave him permission to "commit tax fraud," Weisselberg said, "No."
"Did you conspire with the Trump family?" Futerfas asked. "No," Weisselberg said.
Trump Organization's former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and attorney Alan Futerfas in the courtroom in New York on Nov. 17, 2022. (Christine Cornell)
Weisselberg also testified he hadn't been taking off-the-books perks to benefit the company — he said he was doing it for himself.
"Your decision not to pay taxes was solely to benefit Allen Weisselberg?" Futerfas asked. "Correct," Weisselberg answered.
He acknowledged the company benefited financially but said, "It was my own personal greed that led to this."
Weisselberg, the prosecution's key witness, was indicted along with the Trump Organization in April of last year in what the government described as a 15-year scheme to cheat the system out of tax money.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty in August and agreed to testify for a lesser sentence. While he was removed as CFO after he was indicted, he testified Tuesday that his duties are largely the same and that he's still making the same amount of money — about $1 million a year.
Weisselberg received $1.76 million in “indirect employee compensation” through the scheme, including a rent-free apartment, expensive cars, private school tuition for his grandchildren and new furniture, prosecutors said in court filings. Other executives got similar perks and were paid bonuses as independent contractors, saving the company payroll taxes.
Weisselberg said Trump was aware of the perks he was getting because he and then later his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump would sign the checks.
Under questioning from Futerfas, Weisselberg said the only person who knew he wasn’t paying the proper taxes on the perks was McConney.
McConney testified last week that Weisselberg as the lone bad actor, calling him a “micromanager” who had to sign off on all financial decisions.
Image: Trump Organization's former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, left, arrives to the courtroom in New York on Nov. 17, 2022. (Yuki Iwamura / AP)
Weisselberg was the only individual charged in the case. Under the terms of his agreement with prosecutors, he agreed to pay nearly $2 million in taxes, interest and penalties and serve five months in jail, followed by five years of probation. He also agreed “to testify truthfully at the upcoming trial of the Trump Organization” or face up to five to 15 years in prison.
He testified earlier Thursday that the Trump Organization cleaned up its business practices after Trump was elected president because of the extra scrutiny it was under.
"Everyone was looking at our company from every different angle you could think of,” including Trump himself, Weisselberg said.
Futerfas asked him whether he'd broken the family's trust with the fraud. "Yes," Weisselberg answered.
Asked whether he was ashamed of his actions, he replied, "More than you can imagine."
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Trump Ex-CFO Tells Jury He and Others Committed Tax Fraud
(Bloomberg) -- The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, testified that greed fueled a tax fraud scheme he says he engaged in with the firm’s controller and the two Trump companies standing trial.
Weisselberg, the prosecution’s star witness against the two business units, told a jury in Manhattan on Thursday that the scheme, which spanned more than a decade, was driven by the simple determination to evade taxes.
“It was my own personal greed that led to this,” the 75-year-old former CFO said on his second day on the witness stand in New York state court.
Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Payroll Corp., one of the two units, tried to show during his cross-examination that Weisselberg’s machinations were concealed from Donald Trump and his family. Weisselberg, who is still drawing his $640,000 annual salary at the Trump Organization even after pleading guilty in the case this summer, grew emotional when Futerfas asked if he had betrayed the family, for whom he has worked for almost 50 years.
Linchpin of Case
Weisselberg’s admission that he committed his crimes together with the Trump companies is the linchpin of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against them. Donald Trump himself, who isn’t charged, has called the trial a baseless vendetta.
“Given that you were getting about $200,000 in expenses, without it being taxed, wasn’t this a savings to the Trump Corporation, because they saved themselves from having to give you a double raise?” Executive Assistant DA Susan Hoffinger asked Weisselberg.
“The Trump Corporation saved some payroll taxes, yes,” he said. Weisselberg later acknowledged that Trump Corp., the other company of the pair, would have had to award him at least $400,000 more to make up for the taxes he’d owe if his compensation weren’t hidden within perks like luxury cars and high-end housing.
Read More: Trump Firm’s Tax Fraud Trial Promises Ex-CFO as Star Witness
“I committed those crimes with Jeff McConney, who I dealt with directly, and Trump Payroll and the Trump Corporation,” Weisselberg told the jury under questioning by Hoffinger.
Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney, who was the prosecution’s first witness, was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony but proved so evasive on the stand that he was declared a hostile witness.
What About the Trumps?
Weisselberg told the jurors Thursday the scam was already in place when he began working for Trump in 1986.
“Did you scheme with any member of the Trump family?” Futerfas asked in his cross-examination.
“No,” Weisselberg said.
Read More: Trump CFO Got Demotion, ‘Small Birthday Cake’ After His Plea
Weisselberg has admitted that Donald Trump personally paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in private school tuition for the executive’s grandchildren. The former CFO and his wife each got a Mercedes-Benz and an apartment paid for by the Trump companies. Prosecutors say these perks were all part of the fraud.
At one point Weisselberg appeared to help the prosecution significantly when Futerfas asked him whether the Trump companies had benefited from the fraud -- a crucial part of the DA’s case.
“I didn’t do the analysis,” Weisselberg said, “but I knew there was a benefit to the company.”
Yet when asked whether not paying taxes on the perks was his decision alone and solely for his own benefit, Weisselberg said yes.
Emotional Testimony
He grew emotional when Futerfas asked if he had lived up to the trust the Trump Organization had placed in him.
“Did you betray that trust?” Futerfas asked.
“Yes,” Weisselberg said.
“And you did it for your own personal gain?” the lawyer asked.
“Correct,” Weisselberg said.
Read More: Trump Firm’s Fraud Trial Sees Drama as Witness Declared Hostile
The executive -- who has worked for three generations of Trumps, starting under Donald Trump’s father, Fred -- then grew teary, his voice cracking.
“Are you embarrassed by what you did?” Futerfas asked.
“More than you can imagine,” Weisselberg said.
“Ashamed?” the attorney pressed.
“Yes, very much so,” Weisselberg said, his face reddening.
He continues his testimony when the trial resumes Friday.
The case is People v. Trump Organization, 01473-2021, New York State Supreme Court (Manhattan).
For millennia, people have reported a rare and strange phenomenon: a sudden rain of frogs — or fish or worms — from the sky. You may be minding your own business walking in a park on a blustery day when a small frog hits you on the top of the head. As you peer down at the stunned animal, another one comes down, and another and another all around you, in a surreal rain of frogs in various states of trauma.
Charles Fort was an early collector of reports about strange phenomena. (Image credit: Public domain.)
Charles Fort, an early collector of reports about strange phenomena, noted the following in his 1919 tome, "The Book of the Damned": "A shower of frogs which darkened the air and covered the ground for a long distance is the reported result of a recent rainstorm at Kansas City, Mo." This report first appeared in the July 12, 1873, issue of Scientific American. Fort noted dozens of similar reports from around the world and wrote that as "for accounts of small frogs, or toads, said to have been seen to fall from the sky, [a skeptical] writer says that all observers were mistaken: that the frogs or toads must have fallen from trees or other places overhead."
Any number of small animals have been reported falling from the sky, including ants, small fish and worms. Modern examples tend to be rare, but reports do surface occasionally in magazines devoted to strange phenomenon such as Fortean Times (named after Fort). Frog rains were mentioned in an episode of "The X-Files" titled "Die Hand Die Verletzt" ("The Hand That Wounds"), in which Agent Scully exclaims, "Mulder... toads just fell from the sky," to which the unflappable Agent Mulder replies, "I guess their parachutes didn't open."
Bob Rickard and John Michell, in their book, "The Rough Guide to the Unexplained," note that "The quality of the evidence for rains of fishes and frogs is good, with a canon of well-observed cases going back to antiquity." According to Jane Goldman's "The Book of The X-Files," "Falls of animals were first recorded in A.D. 77, in Pliny's 'Natural History' which scoffed at the idea that they could rain from the skies, suggesting instead that they grew from the ground after heavy rains. This explanation likely seemed reasonable 2,000 years ago — after all, some animals such as worms and insects do seem to suddenly "appear" on the grounds during and following heavy rains, driven to the surface because they cannot breathe in the soaked soil. So if the frogs don't originally come from the skies, and they don't "grow" out of the ground after being watered, where do they come from? [Pictures: Cute and Colorful Frogs]
Explanations?
The most likely explanation for how small frogs get up into the sky in the first place is meteorological: a whirlwind, tornado or other natural phenomenon. Fort admitted that this is a possibility, but offered several reasons why he doubted that's the true or complete explanation: "It is so easy to say that small frogs that have fallen from the sky had been scooped up by a whirlwind ... but [this explanation offers] no regard for mud, debris from the bottom of a pond, floating vegetation, loose things from the shores — but a precise picking out of the frogs only. ... Also, a pond going up would be quite as interesting as frogs coming down. Whirlwinds we read of over and over — but where and what whirlwind? It seems to me that anybody who had lost a pond would be heard from." For example, Fort argued, one published report of "a fall of small frogs near Birmingham, England, June 30, 1892, is attributed to a specific whirlwind — but not a word as to any special pond that had contributed."
What about the reasons that Fort and others cite for why a whirlwind is not a good explanation? Frogs and fish do not of course live in the sky, nor do they suddenly and mysteriously appear there; in fact they share a common habitat: ponds and streams. It's certain that they gained altitude in a natural, not supernatural, way. [Countdown: Fishy Rain to Fire Whirlwinds: The World's Weirdest Weather]
That there are very few eyewitness accounts of frogs and fish being sucked up into the sky during a tornado, whirlwind or storm is hardly mysterious or unexplainable. Anytime winds are powerful enough to suck up fish, frogs, leaves, dirt and detritus, they are powerful enough to be of concern to potential eyewitnesses. In other words, people who would be close enough to a whirlwind or tornado to see the flying amphibians would be more concerned for their own safety (and that of others) to pay much attention to whether or not some frogs are among the stuff being picked up and flown around at high speeds. These storms are loud, windy, chaotic, and hardly ideal for accurate eyewitness reporting. A 1555 engraving of a rain of fish. (Image credit: Public domain.)
The same applies to Fort's apparent surprise that, following frog falls, farmers or others don't come forward to identify which specific pond the frogs came from. How would anyone know? Whirlwinds and tornadoes may move quickly and over many miles, destroying and lifting myriad debris in its wake. Unless a farmer took an inventory of all the little frogs in a pond both before and after a storm, there's no way anyone would know exactly where they came from, nor would it be noteworthy.
Of course, a wind disturbance need not be a full-fledged tornado to be strong enough to pick up small frogs and fish; smaller, localized versions such as waterspouts and dust devils — which may not be big enough, potentially damaging enough, or near enough to populated areas to be reported in the local news — may do the trick.
High winds, whirlwinds and tornadoes are strong enough to overturn cars and rip the roofs off of buildings. In 2012, a 2-year-old Indiana girl was lifted into the air during a storm, and, incredibly, carried into the sky and found alive 10 miles away. Strong winds are certainly powerful enough to lift up and carry frogs into the air. It is, of course, possible that there is some unknown, small-frog-levitating force at work in nature, but until and unless that is verified, it seems likely that this mystery is solved after all.
Charles Hoy Fort was an American “self-educated newspaperman, modestly-successful short story writer, unsuccessful novelist and inventor, and eccentric natural philosopher,” regarded by some, especially his devotees, who call themselves ‘Forteans’, as a pioneer of anomalistic.
This is a term coined in 1973 by an anthropologist by the name of Roger W. Wescott, and has been used to describe the “interdisciplinary study of scientific anomalies (alleged extraordinary events unexplained by currently accepted scientific theory)”. Fort was fascinated by such anomalies, and spent much of his adult life collecting accounts of such events. Charles’ Troubled Early Life
Charles Fort was born on August 6, 1874 in Albany, New York. Fort’s parents were Dutch immigrants who became fairly prosperous in the United States. Fort’s family owned a wholesale grocery business in Albany. Fort had a painful childhood, as it has been said that his father was abusive and often beat him. Some believe that as a result of these experiences, Fort became skeptical and distrustful of authority and dogma.
In 1892, at the age of 18, Fort escaped his father’s authoritarian ways by leaving home. He began working as a journalist for a New York newspaper and eventually became an editor of a Long Island paper. He quit his job, however, in 1893, and hitchhiked around the world.
For the next couple of years, Fort lived in the Bronx with his wife. During this time, the couple lived in poverty, and Fort tried to make ends meet by writing stories for newspapers and magazines. Fort eventually gave up on writing fiction. In 1906, he began to collect accounts of anomalies. However, this was not his initial aim. Instead, whilst doing his research in the New York Public Library, he read about a whole range of subjects, including science, art, philosophy, and economics. It was here that he found reports of odd things, and started to collect them by scribbling them on small sheets of paper.
In 1915, Fort had finished writing two books, X and Y. Unfortunately, publishers during that time were not interested in them, and hence they were considered failures. These books were later lost, as Fort destroyed both manuscripts later in his career.
In the same year, Fort was encouraged by Theodore Dreisner (a magazine editor whom Fort met in 1905 and befriended) to compile his reports of anomalies into a book. In the following year, Fort received a modest inheritance from an uncle which allowed him to concentrate on his writing. Thus, in 1919, the Book of the Damned was published. Theodore Dreiser, photographed by Carl Van Vechten. ( Public Domain ) The Emergence of the Fortean Society
Apart from collecting bizarre reports, it has been claimed that Fort did not actually do much else. For example, it has been pointed out that Fort did not question the veracity of the accounts he collected. Additionally, Fort was not really interested in making any sense out of the accounts he collected either. It has also been argued that Fort’s primary goal of collecting these accounts of anomalies was to embarrass and ridicule scientists with stories that could not be explained or answered by science. For Fort, scientists were on his list of authoritative figures he distrusted.
Charles Fort died at the age of 57 on May 3, 1932 in the Bronx, New York. A year before his death, the Fortean Society was established by one of Fort’s friends, Tiffany Thayer. Fort, who was a skeptic even of his own authority, refused to join this society. Whilst some emphasize his hostility towards science, other regard him as a hero and an inspirational figure whose writings on anomalies has profoundly impacted the way we view and approach this subject.
Fortean Societies can be found in different parts of the world, but Charles Fort also inspired magazines, such as the Fortean Times, and a short-run TV program called Fortean TV . Both the magazine and the show have a focus on anomalous phenomena that probably would have interested Fort. Steve Moore - obituary Steve Moore was the co-founder of The Fortean Times who detailed the strange and supernatural Steve Moore DIED 13 Apr 2014 Steve Moore, who has died aged 64, had a prolific career at the margins of literature. His output included scripts for comic strips, novelisations of films and supernatural fiction. He also edited several collections of pieces sent in by readers of The Fortean Times — a magazine devoted to strange phenomena — of which Moore was a founder and mainstay. He compiled The Fortean Times Book of Strange Deaths (1999), in which one entry ran: “In Japan in 1981, Kenji Urada was killed when a robot at the Kawasaki factory where he worked mistook his head for a component that needed tightening up.” For their Book of Close Shaves And Amazing Luck, he observed that “you may be lucky to be alive if you’ve just had a six-foot steel crowbar driven through one side of your skull and out the other, but most of us would rather we didn’t actually need that sort of luck in the first place”. Long fascinated by the I Ching and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, his Fortean contributions also included book reviews and articles on Oriental curiosities. His involvement had begun in 1973 when he contributed stories to what was then known as The News; he had known its publisher, Bob Rickard, since 1969, when both worked on a fanzine, Orpheus (where Moore once penned an editorial on “the psychological benevolence and universal importance of the suet pudding”). Moore favoured goatee beards, wore black satin jackets and practised magic. He believed that as he had been born “at the full moon atop a crescent-shaped hill” and bore a “crescent birthmark on my left forearm … I was obviously destined to be either a werewolf or a lunatic. Fortunately there’s been no sign of fur or ripping out people’s throats so far.” The hill in question was Shooters Hill in south London, where he was born on June 11 1949 and where he lived for nearly all his life in the same book-filled house. It was where he published fanzines during the late Sixties, where he worked on nearly all his subsequent writings, and where he died. Leaving school aged 16, Moore was a flour grader at the Rank Hovis McDougall laboratory in Deptford, then an office boy at Odhams Press, a subsidiary of the publishers IPC. Within three months he became a junior sub-editor on Pow! and Fantastic comics, both of which featured imported strips from Marvel Comics (by the late Seventies, Moore would be working for the British arm of that imprint). He became a freelance writer in 1972. He produced film and TV tie-in Christmas annuals for Supergran, Dick Turpin and a Polish-produced series, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson (1979) — which was never shown in Britain. Moore also wrote for IPC’s girls’ comic Mirabelle, but was too embarrassed to buy any of its copies; embarrassment continued when, having been assured a Titbits feature on sexual exploits in Bangkok would be credited to his pseudonym Pedro Henry, it went to press under his real name. Returning to IPC in 1977, he wrote for 2000AD from its 12th issue onwards. His strips for Marvel’s Doctor Who Weekly (later Doctor Who Magazine) were also clearly in 2000AD’s style. Moore’s creation of muscular, weapon-wielding “Abslom Daak – Dalek Killer” had more in common with the character Snake Plissken from Escape From New York than any jelly baby-proffering timelord. A fellow Doctor Who contributor was the unrelated Alan Moore, who described Steve as his “oldest and dearest friend”, who had taught him the mechanics of comic strips. Alan made his namesake the subject of the essay Unearthing (2006); meanwhile, Steve wrote the novelisation of the film V For Vendetta (published 2006), adapted from his friend’s graphic novel. He published a Gothic fantasy novel, Somnium, in 2011. Steve Moore never married. For many years he cared for his brother Chris, who suffered from motor neurone disease and died in 2009.
Steve Moore, born June 11 1949, died March 16 2014
