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Satire from The Borowitz Report

Eris, Greek Goddess of Chaos, Confirms That She Wanted Trump to Be President

By Andy Borowitz

12:27 P.M.


MT. OLYMPUS (The Borowitz Report)—Partially confirming Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s theory of divine intervention in the 2016 election, Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, discord, and strife, revealed on Friday that she had wanted Donald J. Trump to be President.

Speaking from her temple on Mt. Olympus, the usually reclusive deity said that Trump was “far and away” her first choice to be President in 2016.

“I’d been following his career for years,” the goddess of disorder and ruin said. “The bankruptcies, the business failures. There was a lot for me to love.”

She complained that the media had given Vladimir Putin “way too much credit” for Trump’s ascent, asserting, “Who do you think made Putin President of Russia?”

Looking ahead to the 2020 election, Eris said that she was officially undecided about which candidate to back for President, but that she was leaning toward Howard Schultz. “What a shit show that would be,” she said.


Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,”
and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998.
He writes the Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for newyorker.com

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has agreed to talk to the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 8, opting for closed-door testimony after pulling out of a separate public hearing due to security issues.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Monday that Cohen will be appearing voluntarily and that the panel will work with law enforcement to make sure he is safe. Cohen last week postponed testimony he was supposed to give the House Oversight and Reform Committee, blaming threats from Trump and the president’s attorney-spokesman, Rudy Giuliani.

Cohen has not detailed the threats, nor has his lawyer. But Trump and Giuliani have publicly urged the Justice Department to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law, insinuating he was part of some unspecific criminal activity. Trump, for example, told Fox News this month that Cohen “should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at.”

Trump’s fixer-turned-foe is a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Cohen also played a pivotal role in buying the silence of a porn actress and a former Playboy Playmate who both alleged they had sex with Trump. The president has denied their claims.

Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations and other offenses connected to the payments, and he is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence in March. Federal prosecutors have said Trump directed Cohen to make the payments during the campaign.

Schiff, D-Calif., said Cohen had relayed “legitimate concerns” about his safety and the safety of his family.

“Efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are tactics we expect from organized crime, not the White House,” Schiff said. “These attacks on Mr. Cohen’s family must stop.”

Cohen is also scheduled to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee next month, in compliance with a subpoena. That interview is scheduled for Feb. 12, according to Lanny Davis, one of Cohen’s lawyers.

In response to:
Satire from The Borowitz Report

Americans Relieved to Learn That Trump Spends Sixty Per Cent of Time Not Using Powers as President

By Andy Borowitz

12:07 P.M.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A leak of Donald J. Trump’s official White House schedule has left millions of Americans deeply relieved that Trump spends approximately sixty per cent of each day not using his powers as President.

In conversations across the country, Americans called the revelation that Trump devotes the majority of his day to “executive time,” a euphemism for watching TV and checking Twitter, the most reassuring news out of the White House in months.

“Like most of the people I know, the idea of Donald Trump sitting behind his desk doing things that affect the country has me in a state of mortal terror,” Carol Foyler, a resident of Minneapolis, said. “Just knowing that he’s spending sixty per cent of his time doing basically nothing makes me feel somewhat better.”

Harland Dorrinson, who lives in Detroit, agreed that it was “great news that Trump is only President forty per cent of the time” but called on the entertainment industry to create more diverting programming that might distract Trump for a larger portion of his day. “It would be fantastic if we could push the sixty per cent of his day that he does nothing up to seventy or even eighty per cent,” he said. “Maybe someone could come up with a podcast that he could get into.”

But Tracy Klugian, a Baltimore resident, said that the leak of Trump’s schedule did little to allay her darkest fears. “Until I find out that he’s spending a hundred per cent of his time not being President, I won’t sleep at night,” she said.


Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,”
and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998.
He writes the Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for newyorker.com.

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Federal prosecutors issue sweeping subpoena for documents from Trump inaugural committee, a sign of a deepening criminal probe

Federal prosecutors in New York on Monday delivered a sweeping request for documents related to donations and spending by President Trump’s inaugural committee, a sign of a deepening criminal investigation into activities related to the nonprofit organization.

A wide-ranging subpoena served on the inaugural committee Monday seeks an array of documents, including all information related to inaugural donors, vendors, contractors, bank accounts of the inaugural committee and any information related to foreign contributors to the committee, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.

Only U.S. citizens and legal residents can legally donate to a committee established to finance presidential inaugural festivities.

“We have just received a subpoena for documents. While we are still reviewing the subpoena, it is our intention to cooperate with the inquiry,” a spokesman for the committee said in a statement.

The subpoena — issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York — indicates that prosecutors are investigating crimes related to conspiracy to defraud the United States, mail fraud, false statements, wire fraud and money laundering........

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Trump Inaugural Committee Ordered to Hand Over Documents to Federal Investigators

Federal prosecutors are investigating the activities of President Trump’s inaugural committee.

By Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess

Feb. 4, 2019

Escalating one of the investigations into President Trump’s inaugural committee, federal prosecutors ordered on Monday that its officials turn over documents about donors, finances and activities, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.

The subpoena seeks documents related to all of the committee’s donors and guests; any benefits handed out, including tickets and photo opportunities with the president; federal disclosure filings; vendors; contracts; and more, one of the people said.

The new requests expand an investigation prosecutors opened late last year amid a flurry of scrutiny of the inaugural committee. And they showed that the investigations surrounding Mr. Trump, once centered on potential ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election, have spread far beyond the special counsel’s office to include virtually all aspects of his adult life: his business, his campaign, his inauguration and his presidency.

In the subpoena, investigators also showed interest in whether any foreigners illegally donated to the committee, as well as whether committee staff members knew that such donations were illegal, asking for documents laying out legal requirements for donations. Federal law prohibits foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds....

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"Mr. Barr, the American people know you are no different from Rudy Giuliani, or Kellyanne Conway, or any of the other people who sacrifice their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the oval office. You once turned down a job offer from Donald Trump to represent him as his private attorney. At your confirmation hearing, you told Sen. Feinstein that, quote, "The job of Attorney General is not the same as representing the president."

So you know the difference but you've chosen to be the president's lawyer and side with him over the interest of the American people. To start with, you should never have been involved in supervising the Robert Mueller investigation. You wrote a 19-page unsolicited memo, which you admit was not based on any fact, attacking the premise of half of the investigation. And you also should have insisted that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recuse himself. He was not just a witness to some of the president's obstructive behavior, we now know he was in frequent personal contact of the president, a subject of the investigation. You should have left it to career officials.

Then, once the report was delivered by the special counsel, you delayed its release for more than two weeks and let the president's personal lawyers look at it before you even deigned to let the public or the Congress see it. During the time you substituted your own political judgment for the special counsel's legal conclusions in a four-page letter to Congress and now we know, thanks to a free press, that Mr. Mueller wrote you a letter objecting to your so-called summary.

When you called Mueller to discuss his letter, the reports are that he thought your summary was giving the press, Congress, and the public a misleading impression of his work. He asked you to release the report summaries to correct the misimpression you created but you refused. When you finally did decide to release the report over a congressional recess and on the eve of two major religious holidays, you called a press conference, to once again try to clear Donald Trump before anyone had a chance to read the special counsel's report and come to their own conclusions.

But when we read the report, we knew Robert Mueller's concerns were valid. And that your version of events was false. You used every advantage of your office to create the impression that the president was cleared of misconduct. You selectively quoted fragments from the special counsel's report, taking some of the most important statements out of context and ignoring the rest. You put the power and authority of the office of the attorney general and the Department of Justice, behind a public relations effort to help Donald Trump protect himself.

Finally, you lied to Congress. You told representative Charlie Crist that you didn't know what objectives Mueller's team might to the March 24 so-called summary. You told Senator Chris van Hollen that you didn't know if Bob Mueller supported your conclusions, but you knew you lied. And now, we know.

A lot of respected nonpartisan legal experts and elected officials were surprised by your efforts to protect the president. But I wasn't surprised. You did exactly what I thought you'd do, that's why I voted against your confirmation. I expected you would try to protect the president. And indeed, you did.

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Donald Trump is revealed as a billion-dollar fraud: That probably won't hurt him

If the "Resistance" hopes new revelations about Trump's finances will destroy his popularity, we've learned nothing

Chauncey DeVega
May 11, 2019 4:00PM

Donald Trump does not exist. He is a character who plays many roles simultaneously. Trump is a vigilante, professional wrestling villain, a TV pitchman and a reality TV star. He's also a cad, a bully and a wannabe dictator. And yes, he is a billionaire. (Or rather, he plays one on TV.) Because of his guile, boldness, help from foreign sponsors and — yes, let's admit it — his charisma, in 2016 Donald Trump won the greatest role on the world stage: President of the United States of America.

Last Tuesday, the New York Times revealed more about the man behind the character: Donald Trump is also a "billion-dollar loser."

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

The Times reported that Trump "appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer" during the years in question. In 1990 and 1991 alone, Trump's "core business losses" of roughly $250 million a year "were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers," according to IRS information. Trump did not pay any income taxes in eight of the 10 years for which the Times obtained his returns.

This is not much of a revelation. It only confirms what has long been suspected and (increasingly) known by the public.

In 2018, the New York Times revealed that Trump received at least $400 million from his father, mostly through elaborate schemes to avoid paying taxes and other untoward if not illegal means.

Investigative reporter Craig Unger told Salon last October that he believes Trump has laundered money for foreign oligarchs and criminals:

By 2002, a company called Bayrock Group LLC had moved into the 24th floor of Trump Tower. They began partnering with him. They made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. It was a completely different paradigm from his old business relationships. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash and he couldn’t get bank loans except some from Deutsche Bank. He was so bankrupt that almost no Western bank could loan him a dime.

These were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was built, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, limited liability corporations and so forth. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with the Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia.

In a conversation with Salon in April of 2018, Pulitzer-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who has followed Trump's career for decades, discussed the president's apparent criminal connections:

Here are the key things people should know about Donald Trump. He comes from a family of criminals: His grandfather made his fortune running whorehouses in Seattle and in the Yukon Territory. His father, Fred, had a business partner named Willie Tomasello, who was an associate of the Gambino crime family. Trump's father was also investigated by the U.S. Senate for ripping off the government for what would be the equivalent of $36 million in today's money. Donald got his showmanship from his dad, as well as his comfort with organized criminals.