truthout--2020-09-17--The Next Revolt by Athletes Could Damage Trump’s Reelection Prospects

Last year , when LeBron James described some of President Trump ’ s public statements as “ laughable and scary , ” Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham ordered the basketball superstar to “ shut up and dribble.
” LeBron responded thoughtfully by saying that her comment “ resonated with me , but I think it resonated with a lot of people to be able to feel like they can be more.
” Those “ people ” have come to include most of the National Basketball Association and hundreds of other athletes in professional baseball , hockey , football , women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tiers of college sports .
As for that “ more ” they have become ?
They are now active participants in the most significant and inclusive wave of the often crushed or coopted yet ever breathing “ athletic revolution ” that first took shape in the 1960s .
Thanks to the pandemically isolated “ bubbles ” in which some teams are now living and playing , and driven by Donald Trump ’ s continuing racially based attacks on various sports , some athletes are now communing with each other ever more regularly and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decisions often supported by their teams and even leagues .
In the process , many of their protests against systemic racism and specific acts of police brutality have gone from messages at their usual social media outlets to acts like forcing games to be postponed via wildcat strikes .
As baseball and basketball , battered by the Covid-19 pandemic , cautiously continue their delayed and shortened seasons and the National Football League and some college football conferences finally launch their own belated starts , more and more questions arise : Will such physically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Is there even such a thing as a socially distanced tackle ? )
Will fans accept rule changes meant to take the coronavirus into account and still keep watching ( while their own lives threaten to go down the tubes ) ?
Will former San Francisco 49er Super Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick , who sparked the current sports revolt by kneeling to the national anthem four years ago and was subsequently abused by the president and functionally banished from football , ever get to play again ?
And above all , what effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have , if any , on the election ?
The Women Led the Way However it plays out , the most recent victory of National Basketball League players striking during their playoffs over yet another grim death of a black man at the hands of the police was spectacular .
The team owners agreed that , in the Covid-19 moment with polling places potentially in short supply on November 3rd , pro basketball arenas would be made available as just such sites .
Consider this path breaking : it ’ s the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such a gift to democracy from two of the ( previously ) most self-centered groups in America .
Before we cry “ Bravo !
” however , let ’ s cry “ Brava !
” After all , it was the most marginalized of the professional leagues , the Women ’ s National Basketball Association ( WNBA ) , that provided the impetus for the current movement and remains its moral center .
Keep in mind that , for years now , women pro basketball players have been protesting against gun violence and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teams , while their male equivalents , who earn so much more money and possess so much more security , tended to posture and pontificate while putting themselves at much less risk .
Last month , the women upped their game .
The WNBA ’ s Atlanta Dream players donned T-shirts endorsing Dr. Raphael Warnock , the Democratic opponent of Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler , who has disparaged Black Lives Matter and , as the New York Times reported , “ publicly and frequently derided the league for dedicating its season to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just happens to be the Dream ’ s co-owner .
Other teams in the league followed suit and soon most teams were wearing such “ Vote Warnock ” T-shirts , while also proclaiming that Black Lives Matter .
( BLM , by the way , was a group founded by women . )
Soon after , something stunning happened in the male version of pro basketball with the NBA in the first round of its playoff games in a “ bubble ” at Florida ’ s Disney World .
After a white police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jacob Blake , in the back seven times in Kenosha , Wisconsin , the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take part in their next playoff game .
And that protest then produced a cascade of brief strikes by other NBA and WNBA teams and , most surprisingly , by predominantly white Major League Baseball teams .
While the statements of the protesters tended to describe the strikes as a response to recent incidents of police brutality , the underlying cause may have lain elsewhere .
Those angry strikes may really have been side effects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which they were playing .
In them , the usual focus on the game of the moment and the party to follow was replaced by conversations about Donald Trump , racism , and the responsibilities of rich Black sports celebrities to express themselves and act in the interests of their communities .
The New Yorker ’ s Isaac Chotiner conducted a revealing interview with Andre Iguodala , a Miami Heat forward and the first vice-president of the NBA players ’ union , who said : “ African-Americans are trying to search for ourselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world and where we stand in America .
And we don ’ t know .
We shoulder a lot of the burdens of our community , but I think a lot of that responsibility should fall on the majority , and those who are the lawmakers and who are supposed to insure that every man and woman is treated as an equal .
But we still haven ’ t seen that .
So we are still searching for our place.
” Take the Money or March ?
One of the most poignant expressions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Los Angeles Clippers , Doc Rivers , whose father had been a police officer .
“ It ’ s amazing , ” he commented , “ why we keep loving this country , and this country does not love us back .
It ’ s really so sad… I ’ m so often reminded of my color… We got to do better .
But we got to demand better.
” What exactly does “ demand better ” mean and what could it achieve ?
In the sports world , at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still-must-be-seen-to-be-believed arena voting sites , the sporadic protests of various players over the years for equality and social justice have usually resulted , at best , in yet more discussion about the issues they were raising rather than actual solutions , however provisional .
Although over the decades , the integration of baseball , the introduction of free agency , and the emergence of the Black quarterback could all certainly be viewed as progress in the sports world itself .
Today , however , it remains a question whether players will continue pushing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often in the past , settle for better salaries and pensions .
As Iguodala put it : “ Historically , money determines a lot of our actions .
Do we stand up for something or take the money ?
We will always get caught in those crosshairs .
But I think players are smartening up , and I think that will come into play with a lot of guys.
” Similar optimism has been expressed recently by a number of sporting icons including Hall of Fame basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar who began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He found hope in “ the instantaneous support of other sports teams and athletes , ” especially ones from Major League Soccer ( only 26 % black ) , Major League Baseball ( 8 % ) , and overwhelmingly white pro tennis .
Times , Jabbar believes , may indeed be changing .
After all , he remembers that “ when I boycotted the 1968 Olympics because of the gross racial inequities , I was met with a vicious backlash criticizing my lack of gratitude for being invited into the air-conditioned Big House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swelter and suffer.
” Another long-time sports activist , retired sociology professor Harry Edwards who was instrumental in inspiring the memorable Black power salute given from the medal stand at the 1968 Mexico Olympics by American track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos , is similarly hopeful .
An adviser to Kaepernick , Edwards sees an opening for genuine change in this moment because , he says , it ’ s no longer just about the acts of individual sports figures .
This wave of protest , he adds , “ is distinctively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involved .
These are entire teams that are reacting to this situation and leveraging their power to demand change .
It ’ s not just a Colin Kaepernick or Eric Reid or Michael Bennett or Maya Moore .
This one is about an entire organization and I could see this coming from the time the University of Missouri football team protested.
” That was back in 2015 when that football team joined a campus-wide demand for the resignation of the university ’ s president for mishandling racial incidents at the school .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a full-scale involvement of a college sports team in a protest movement was unheard of at the time .
It would take another five years and so many more racial nightmares before that spirit of unity with a larger protesting culture in this Black Lives Matter era , not to mention the willingness of athletes to risk their own brief careers , would bloom throughout sports .
The current reaction of the Trump administration and its allies to such protests has underlined the threat that they clearly feel from wildcat strikes , bent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notions of “ normality ” in an unnerved and unnerving world .
The president , in particular , has been counting on the return of pro sports and college football to help project an image of him being in control in this ongoing pandemic .
Weighing in from the White House , President Trump ’ s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner typically dismissed the recent set of basketball wildcat strikes by saying , “ Look , I think that the NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially.
” That snide attempt to separate the athletes from their fan base , itself stricken by a weakening economy , the still-spreading coronavirus , and a mounting sense of political anxiety , soon blossomed into something more like a political campaign theme .
At the right-wing website Newsmax , for instance , conservative radio host Chris Salcedo attacked “ the spoiled rotten millionaires.
” He then added : “ Pro sports is no longer about unifying us but about shoving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our nearest orifice .
They push social justice , which is the absence of justice.
” For all the right-wing outrage over the basketball protests , football is now the true American national pastime and carries the most weight with Trump and gang .
Several months ago , I speculated that , “ if the National Football League plays regular season games this fall , President Trump stands a good chance of winning reelection for returning America to business as usual — or , at least , to his twisted version of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NFL owners have been Trump donors , the league , which did away with pre-season games , has been bending leftward to avoid a NBA-style set of strikes that could cripple the season just as it ’ s starting .
Last month , League Commissioner Roger Goodell professed regret for not paying more attention to Colin Kaepernick ’ s message when he took those knees .
Topping that , earlier this month , Goodell announced that “ End Racism ” and “ It Takes All of Us ” signs will be stenciled in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ season and the so-called Black national anthem , “ Lift Every Voice and Sing , ” will be sung before each opening game .
Political slogans will even be allowed on helmets .
In certain ways , when it comes to the Trump voter in particular , the return of college football — a major multibillion-dollar business that pays most of its “ employees ” nothing whatsoever — with its own cult-like regional passions is of particular importance .
While college football fans tend to lean right and insist on their entertainment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , college players have used the health risks of Covid-19 to ramp up their demands for more control over their lives and a share of the revenue that their schools collect from the sale of jerseys with their names on them .
After two of the five major conferences , the West Coast ’ s Pac-12 and the Midwestern-based Big 10 , worrying about the toll that the pandemic might take , called off their fall seasons , the Trump campaign declared : “ The Radical Left is trying to CANCEL college @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : five key swing states — Pennsylvania , Michigan , Wisconsin , Ohio and Minnesota — have Big Ten teams and calling off the season in this fashion does , of course , send a message to future voters about the state of Trumpian America .
In reality , the urge to protest playing football in the midst of a pandemic was spreading ( and not just among the usual suspects ) .
Buzz Bissinger , the author of Friday Night Lights , a famed book on high school football in Texas , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the remaining leagues to boycott their games : “ [ M ] any of the states advocating to play are the same states that find wearing protective masks optional , college football a sacred American right .
Football is not like other sports .
It is blood , snot , sweat and spit , bodily meals the virus craves .
How can these schools even be contemplating the risk when several medical advisers to the N.C.A.A .
said it was ill advised ?
Some coaches have suggested that football players alone should return @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they are viewed more like employees than traditional students and should be compensated.
” Such evidence has , of course , been in plain sight for years , but maybe it takes a plague to see it clearly .
College administrators may be no better than Trumpsters in their willingness to sacrifice lives for money and power .
They certainly do fit comfortably with the sort of sentiments Donald Trump , Jr. , expressed on Chris Salcedo ’ s show : “ I can ’ t tell if some of this stuff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to normalcy allows you to instill some fear that can be used as political leverage .
Let them play , man.
” In other words , the position of the Trump administration as it makes a Covid-19-ignoring scoring drive for November 3rd is distinctly shut up and dribble .
However , the question , in this moment from hell , is : Will the players and fans agree ?
Who will take the next knee ?

The reaction of the Trump administration and its allies to such protests has underlined the threat they feel from them.
Last year, when LeBron James described some of President Trump’s public statements as “laughable and scary,” Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham ordered the basketball superstar to “shut up and dribble.”
LeBron responded thoughtfully by saying that her comment “resonated with me, but I think it resonated with a lot of people to be able to feel like they can be more.”
Those “people” have come to include most of the National Basketball Association and hundreds of other athletes in professional baseball, hockey, football, women’s basketball, and the top tiers of college sports. As for that “more” they have become? They are now active participants in the most significant and inclusive wave of the often crushed or coopted yet ever breathing “athletic revolution” that first took shape in the 1960s.
Thanks to the pandemically isolated “bubbles” in which some teams are now living and playing, and driven by Donald Trump’s continuing racially based attacks on various sports, some athletes are now communing with each other ever more regularly and making collective decisions as never before — decisions often supported by their teams and even leagues. In the process, many of their protests against systemic racism and specific acts of police brutality have gone from messages at their usual social media outlets to acts like forcing games to be postponed via wildcat strikes.
As baseball and basketball, battered by the Covid-19 pandemic, cautiously continue their delayed and shortened seasons and the National Football League and some college football conferences finally launch their own belated starts, more and more questions arise: Will such physically dangerous playing conditions be sustainable? (Is there even such a thing as a socially distanced tackle?) Will fans accept rule changes meant to take the coronavirus into account and still keep watching (while their own lives threaten to go down the tubes)? Will former San Francisco 49er Super Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked the current sports revolt by kneeling to the national anthem four years ago and was subsequently abused by the president and functionally banished from football, ever get to play again? And above all, what effect will the various protests of such athletes have, if any, on the election?
The Women Led the Way
However it plays out, the most recent victory of National Basketball League players striking during their playoffs over yet another grim death of a black man at the hands of the police was spectacular. The team owners agreed that, in the Covid-19 moment with polling places potentially in short supply on November 3rd, pro basketball arenas would be made available as just such sites. Consider this path breaking: it’s the first time a player-owner bargaining agreement has included such a gift to democracy from two of the (previously) most self-centered groups in America.
Before we cry “Bravo!” however, let’s cry “Brava!” After all, it was the most marginalized of the professional leagues, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), that provided the impetus for the current movement and remains its moral center. Keep in mind that, for years now, women pro basketball players have been protesting against gun violence and police brutality, both individually and as teams, while their male equivalents, who earn so much more money and possess so much more security, tended to posture and pontificate while putting themselves at much less risk.
Last month, the women upped their game. The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream players donned T-shirts endorsing Dr. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic opponent of Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, who has disparaged Black Lives Matter and, as the New York Times reported, “publicly and frequently derided the league for dedicating its season to the Black Lives Matter movement.” Loeffler just happens to be the Dream’s co-owner. Other teams in the league followed suit and soon most teams were wearing such “Vote Warnock” T-shirts, while also proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. (BLM, by the way, was a group founded by women.)
Soon after, something stunning happened in the male version of pro basketball with the NBA in the first round of its playoff games in a “bubble” at Florida’s Disney World. After a white police officer shot an unarmed black man, Jacob Blake, in the back seven times in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take part in their next playoff game. And that protest then produced a cascade of brief strikes by other NBA and WNBA teams and, most surprisingly, by predominantly white Major League Baseball teams.
While the statements of the protesters tended to describe the strikes as a response to recent incidents of police brutality, the underlying cause may have lain elsewhere. Those angry strikes may really have been side effects of the Covid-19 “bubbles” in which they were playing. In them, the usual focus on the game of the moment and the party to follow was replaced by conversations about Donald Trump, racism, and the responsibilities of rich Black sports celebrities to express themselves and act in the interests of their communities.
The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner conducted a revealing interview with Andre Iguodala, a Miami Heat forward and the first vice-president of the NBA players’ union, who said:
“African-Americans are trying to search for ourselves and ask where we stand in the world and where we stand in America. And we don’t know. We shoulder a lot of the burdens of our community, but I think a lot of that responsibility should fall on the majority, and those who are the lawmakers and who are supposed to insure that every man and woman is treated as an equal. But we still haven’t seen that. So we are still searching for our place.”
Take the Money or March?
One of the most poignant expressions of that search came from the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, Doc Rivers, whose father had been a police officer. “It’s amazing,” he commented, “why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back. It’s really so sad… I’m so often reminded of my color… We got to do better. But we got to demand better.”
What exactly does “demand better” mean and what could it achieve? In the sports world, at least, with the possible exception of those still-must-be-seen-to-be-believed arena voting sites, the sporadic protests of various players over the years for equality and social justice have usually resulted, at best, in yet more discussion about the issues they were raising rather than actual solutions, however provisional. Although over the decades, the integration of baseball, the introduction of free agency, and the emergence of the Black quarterback could all certainly be viewed as progress in the sports world itself.
Today, however, it remains a question whether players will continue pushing for social reform or, as so often in the past, settle for better salaries and pensions. As Iguodala put it:
“Historically, money determines a lot of our actions. Do we stand up for something or take the money? We will always get caught in those crosshairs. But I think players are smartening up, and I think that will come into play with a lot of guys.”
Similar optimism has been expressed recently by a number of sporting icons including Hall of Fame basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar who began his career with the Milwaukee Bucks. He found hope in “the instantaneous support of other sports teams and athletes,” especially ones from Major League Soccer (only 26% black), Major League Baseball (8%), and overwhelmingly white pro tennis.
Times, Jabbar believes, may indeed be changing. After all, he remembers that “when I boycotted the 1968 Olympics because of the gross racial inequities, I was met with a vicious backlash criticizing my lack of gratitude for being invited into the air-conditioned Big House where I could comfortably watch my community swelter and suffer.”
Another long-time sports activist, retired sociology professor Harry Edwards who was instrumental in inspiring the memorable Black power salute given from the medal stand at the 1968 Mexico Olympics by American track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos, is similarly hopeful. An adviser to Kaepernick, Edwards sees an opening for genuine change in this moment because, he says, it’s no longer just about the acts of individual sports figures. This wave of protest, he adds, “is distinctively different from the single athletes who were involved. These are entire teams that are reacting to this situation and leveraging their power to demand change. It’s not just a Colin Kaepernick or Eric Reid or Michael Bennett or Maya Moore. This one is about an entire organization and I could see this coming from the time the University of Missouri football team protested.”
That was back in 2015 when that football team joined a campus-wide demand for the resignation of the university’s president for mishandling racial incidents at the school. (He did finally resign.) Such a full-scale involvement of a college sports team in a protest movement was unheard of at the time. It would take another five years and so many more racial nightmares before that spirit of unity with a larger protesting culture in this Black Lives Matter era, not to mention the willingness of athletes to risk their own brief careers, would bloom throughout sports.
“Spoiled Rotten Millionaires”
The current reaction of the Trump administration and its allies to such protests has underlined the threat that they clearly feel from wildcat strikes, bent knees, and other actions disrupting their notions of “normality” in an unnerved and unnerving world. The president, in particular, has been counting on the return of pro sports and college football to help project an image of him being in control in this ongoing pandemic.
Weighing in from the White House, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner typically dismissed the recent set of basketball wildcat strikes by saying, “Look, I think that the NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially.”
That snide attempt to separate the athletes from their fan base, itself stricken by a weakening economy, the still-spreading coronavirus, and a mounting sense of political anxiety, soon blossomed into something more like a political campaign theme. At the right-wing website Newsmax, for instance, conservative radio host Chris Salcedo attacked “the spoiled rotten millionaires.” He then added: “Pro sports is no longer about unifying us but about shoving left-wing politics down our throat and up our nearest orifice. They push social justice, which is the absence of justice.”
For all the right-wing outrage over the basketball protests, football is now the true American national pastime and carries the most weight with Trump and gang. Several months ago, I speculated that, “if the National Football League plays regular season games this fall, President Trump stands a good chance of winning reelection for returning America to business as usual — or, at least, to his twisted version of the same.”
Despite the fact that most NFL owners have been Trump donors, the league, which did away with pre-season games, has been bending leftward to avoid a NBA-style set of strikes that could cripple the season just as it’s starting. Last month, League Commissioner Roger Goodell professed regret for not paying more attention to Colin Kaepernick’s message when he took those knees. Topping that, earlier this month, Goodell announced that “End Racism” and “It Takes All of Us” signs will be stenciled in the end zones of all stadiums this season and the so-called Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” will be sung before each opening game. Political slogans will even be allowed on helmets.
In certain ways, when it comes to the Trump voter in particular, the return of college football — a major multibillion-dollar business that pays most of its “employees” nothing whatsoever — with its own cult-like regional passions is of particular importance. While college football fans tend to lean right and insist on their entertainment, no matter who has to die for it, college players have used the health risks of Covid-19 to ramp up their demands for more control over their lives and a share of the revenue that their schools collect from the sale of jerseys with their names on them.
After two of the five major conferences, the West Coast’s Pac-12 and the Midwestern-based Big 10, worrying about the toll that the pandemic might take, called off their fall seasons, the Trump campaign declared: “The Radical Left is trying to CANCEL college football.” The electoral implications were obvious: five key swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota — have Big Ten teams and calling off the season in this fashion does, of course, send a message to future voters about the state of Trumpian America.
In reality, the urge to protest playing football in the midst of a pandemic was spreading (and not just among the usual suspects). Buzz Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights, a famed book on high school football in Texas, for instance, called on players in the remaining leagues to boycott their games:
“[M]any of the states advocating to play are the same states that find wearing protective masks optional, college football a sacred American right. Football is not like other sports. It is blood, snot, sweat and spit, bodily meals the virus craves. How can these schools even be contemplating the risk when several medical advisers to the N.C.A.A. said it was ill advised? Some coaches have suggested that football players alone should return to campus, which provides additional evidence that they are viewed more like employees than traditional students and should be compensated.”
Such evidence has, of course, been in plain sight for years, but maybe it takes a plague to see it clearly. College administrators may be no better than Trumpsters in their willingness to sacrifice lives for money and power. They certainly do fit comfortably with the sort of sentiments Donald Trump, Jr., expressed on Chris Salcedo’s show: “I can’t tell if some of this stuff is politically motivated because not going back to normalcy allows you to instill some fear that can be used as political leverage. Let them play, man.”
In other words, the position of the Trump administration as it makes a Covid-19-ignoring scoring drive for November 3rd is distinctly shut up and dribble. However, the question, in this moment from hell, is: Will the players and fans agree?
Who will take the next knee?
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truthout--2020-09-17--Giuliani’s Payroll Company Got a Paycheck Protection Loan But Lists No Employees

A payroll company owned by Rudy Giuliani , President Trump ’ s personal attorney , took between $ 150,000 and $ 350,000 in taxpayer-backed emergency small business loans this spring .
It ’ s unclear what Giuliani did with the money .
The loan reveals a previously unreported , 18-year-old company owned by Giuliani .
A Salon investigation offers new insight into mechanisms of the former New York mayor and federal prosecutor ’ s elaborate and purposefully obscure business , income and payment arrangements , which have reportedly been the subject of subpoenas from federal investigators in the Southern District @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Salon he was ignorant of the purpose of this company , which has handled payroll needs across more than 18 years and lists him as CEO .
Financial experts tell Salon that one of two scenarios is likely true : Either Giuliani directly employs a number of people through this unknown company , and pays them substantial salaries , or the company misrepresented its finances to the government when it applied for the loan — which would likely constitute fraud , a felony .
Independent journalist Wendy Siegelman appears to have been the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the loan .
According to government records , the loan , which was part of the Small Business Administration ’ s Payroll Protection Program coronavirus relief package , was awarded on April 28 to a company called World Capital Payroll Corp. , a registered “ S Corp ” headquartered at 445 Park Avenue in Manhattan .
Those records show that the company received between $ 150,000 and $ 350,000 in taxpayer-backed federal funds , which can be fully forgiven by the government if the company proves they were put toward payroll and related @ @ @ @ @ @ @ private law firm is registered at that same address . )
Importantly , in order to receive a loan amount in that range , a company was required to prove that it spent between $ 720,000 and $ 1.68 million on payroll and employee benefits .
Because the SBA caps eligible salary amounts at $ 100,000 , this means that World Capital Payroll would have had to directly employ between seven and 16 people , roughly speaking , in 2019 — and paid them all $ 100,000 or more for their services .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ lender , applicants must submit official tax and payroll forms .
According to PPP databases , however , World Capital Payroll did not report having any employees or any jobs saved .
That in itself is not entirely uncommon .
It is unclear , however , who else the company may directly employ other than Giuliani himself , who did not reply when asked that question several times over several days through various points of contact .
Multiple financial experts and PPP lenders told Salon that business owners can not use PPP money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own .
Owners would need to submit separate applications for each entity that has its own tax ID .
It is not clear whether World Capital Payroll Corp has any subsidiaries with employees , and if so , it is not clear why Giuliani would not recall such a company .
World Capital acquired its loan through Signature Bank , which at one point came under scrutiny from financial officials for loans made while it had ties to the Trump family as well as the family of Jared Kushner , the president ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself under “ other financial vehicle ” on its loan application , even though PPP applications offer “ payroll services ” as an option .
That choice puzzled financial experts who spoke with Salon , and one SBA official described it as “ weird.
” New York state ’ s business registry lists WorldCapital Payroll Corp , with no space between the first two words , with Giuliani as CEO .
In a call with Salon , Giuliani confirmed that it was the same company .
The reason for the discrepancy in spelling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lists different addresses on its official New York registry and its PPP loan : its New York address is at an office of Giuliani Partners ; the PPP address is the office of Giuliani ’ s personal law firm .
Giuliani incorporated WorldCapital Payroll Corp in Delaware on Jan. 8 , 2002 , the same day he registered Giuliani Partners and Giuliani Safety & Security in New York , and just over a week after entering the private sector following two terms as mayor of New York City .
Before that , Giuliani @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ronald Reagan for eight years , including more than five years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York , where he became famous for prosecuting the mob and white collar crime .
Two days after incorporating in Delaware , on Jan. 10 , 2002 , Giuliani registered WorldCapital in the state of New York .
According to the Delaware listing , WorldCapital Payroll is a stock corporation authorized for 1,000 shares .
Asked what he used the PPP loan for , Giuliani told Salon in a text message , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you want to it ’ s a waste of time to communicate with you , ” he added .
Salon , he said , “ hates the president , ” and he , Giuliani , was “ just collateral target.
” “ No need to discuss this .
I am comfortable that I follow the law and ethical rules .
Knock yourself out , ” he wrote .
According to multiple reports and individuals familiar with the case , Giuliani ’ s business dealings have been under investigation as part of a broad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Southern District of New York , the office Giuliani once led .
Last October his former business associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington as they waited to board an overseas flight , leading to the investigation into Giuliani .
Those arrests were on unrelated campaign finance charges , but came just one day after the duo met Giuliani for drinks , and just as impeachment hearings were heating up in Congress .
Giuliani later called Salon back to offer more information , saying that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporate bookkeeper about WorldCapital .
In Giuliani ’ s telling , his bookkeeper had just explained to him the function of WorldCapital .
This seems implausible , since Giuliani created and owns the company , and appears to have used it to process payroll to employees of a number of his global firms for the last 18 years .
As stated above , to receive a PPP loan in the reported amount , the company was required to prove that directly employed between seven and 16 U.S. employees , at a minimum .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ called a ‘ paymaster , ' ” Giuliani said , invoking a common term for a company that handles payrolls for multiple entities .
Giuliani ’ s main known entity is his consulting firm , Giuliani Partners .
“ We have three or four different companies , ” he said .
“ A client will pay Giuliani Partners a fee and we ’ d keep it and run the business with it , and then we pay our employees with it , through the payroll company.
” WorldCapital “ has no clients other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subcontract with , ” Giuliani said .
“ I don ’ t take a salary from Giuliani Partners , ” he added , explaining that he takes a cut of that firm ’ s profits after he pays his employees .
His payments also go through WorldCapital Payroll , he said .
Giuliani may not draw a regular salary from Giuliani Partners LLC — which multiple reports have said has been the subject of federal investigation — but the law requires him to take one from WorldCapital Payroll .
According to the SBA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as an “ S Corp ” and is therefore required to pay all employees a “ reasonable ” salary tied to industry norms .
It ’ s unclear what salary Giuliani pays himself as CEO of WorldCapital Payroll .
The PPP salary cap is $ 100,000 — any salary in excess of that amount must be reduced back to $ 100,000 .
New York records show that the former LifeLock spokesman has a few active companies registered in the state : Giuliani Partners LLC and Giuliani Group LLC ( both registered in January @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as WorldCapital Payroll ) , Giuliani Security & Safety LLC ( registered later that year ) and two newer companies he formed last year , Giuliani Communications LLC ( registered in November 2019 ) and what he described in a call as his personal law firm , Rudolph W. Giuliani PLLC ( June 2019 ) .
Giuliani said that he had established his personal law firm last year because a client at the time wanted money put in escrow .
“ I didn ’ t want Giuliani Partners to do it , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Giuliani said , declining to name the client or explain why it would be otherwise unethical .
The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have independently reported that federal investigators have sought documents and correspondence in connection with Giuliani Partners — which Giuliani registered the same day he incorporated WorldCapital in Delaware — or “ any related person or entity.
” The Journal reported in November 2019 that a subpoena had targeted documents “ related to any actual or potential payments , or agreements ” with Giuliani .
In May , Giuliani @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , told Rolling Stone he had seen “ more than one subpoena with Giuliani ’ s name on it , ” dismissing them as pressure tactics .
Giuliani also recalled to Salon , after the discussion with the bookkeeper , that his own paychecks are also processed through WorldCapital — the company he created and owns and has apparently used to process payments for a number of employees for nearly two decades .
It ’ s unclear how Giuliani ’ s statements about WorldCapital , which he allegedly did not know much about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as outlined above , the company would have had to prove to its lender that it had payroll expenses between $ 720,000 and $ 1.68 million in 2019 to qualify for the PPP loan it received .
Giuliani said last year that he had to borrow $ 100,000 from former colleague Marc Mukasey , because he needed help paying his taxes .
He also settled an expensive divorce .
Brett Kappel , a top authority on lobbying and government ethics laws , told Salon that payroll companies often serve as a way to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surprise at the decision to register an S Corp in New York City , which uniquely puts an additional tax on those entities .
“ There aren ’ t many S Corps in the city , ” he said .
S Corps , Kappel explained , are frequently sole proprietorships that offer revenue flexibility and income tax benefits .
S Corps do not pay income tax — income and losses are divided among and passed along to shareholders , who report them individually on their personal tax returns .
The arrangement provides an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to manipulate when calculating annual tax liability .
“ An S Corp is a pass-through entity — income passes through , typically to a single person , and it doesn ’ t give you the same level of liability protections as an LLC , ” Kappel said .
Kappel ’ s second question — why Giuliani ’ s payroll company directly received a PPP loan — appears important .
An SBA official and multiple financial experts told Salon that because PPP loans are allocated to a company by its tax identification number , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward paying its own employees .
In other words , Giuliani could not legally use a loan received by WorldCapital to pay employees of his other companies .
Asked whether it would be feasible to misrepresent payroll information , a PPP expert at a national lender told Salon that “ pretty much anything ” was possible in the program ’ s first weeks .
“ At the beginning , it was like a free-for-all , ” the expert told Salon .
“ They tightened it up later , but in those early days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down on a napkin and send it in.
” While it would be difficult for business owners to fraudulently represent themselves to a national lender , the employee said , such a scheme would be easier if they approached a small lender , especially one they were familiar with .
That would be fraud , the expert said , a conclusion shared by all government and private financial experts consulted for this article .
For one example of known fraud , the employee pointed to federal prosecutions where PPP borrowers tried to defraud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of thin air .
It is unclear whether the spelling discrepancy between WorldCapital Payroll and World Capital Payroll is material or a mistake , though both companies share addresses with Giuliani entities .
There is no World Capital Payroll in New York state records .
Giuliani did not respond to questions about how WorldCapital distributed its taxpayer-backed PPP money .
If Giuliani does employ other individuals or contractors through WorldCapital , he did not divulge who those people or entities were , what payroll-processing services they provided for him , or what their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was told that WorldCapital Payroll had categorized itself as “ other financial vehicle , ” not as a “ payroll services ” company , but as an “ other financial vehicle , ” the official called the decision “ weird ” and suggested a review of the lender .
WorldCapital Payroll ’ s lender was Signature Bank , established in 2001 , which lists 31 offices in the New York metropolitan area , Connecticut and California .
It is a small institution , not listed among the SBA ’ s top 100 most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 .
Signature was featured in a lengthy 2018 New York Times article as the Trump family ’ s “ go-to ” bank , however .
When Michael Cohen , the president ’ s former personal attorney , needed $ 17 million to purchase a Manhattan apartment building in 2015 , he turned to Signature .
Signature also backed Trump ’ s Florida golf course and lent money to Jared Kushner and his father , real estate developer Charles Kushner .
Trump ’ s daughter , Ivanka Trump ( who is married to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bank ’ s board of directors when those loans were extended .
Notably , none of Giuliani ’ s other companies mentioned above received a federal PPP loan .
It ’ s unclear why only WorldCapital — the one company he owns that does not have “ Giuliani ” in its name — applied for and received federal funds .
( A number of websites allow you to search the PPP database by company name . )
Giuliani Partners , which is reportedly the subject of a federal criminal inquiry , has had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including in Ukraine , as well as a gold trader connected to a Justice Department investigation into a Turkish bank .
“ One of the things that Russians and other foreign actors are good at is moving money into the United States , ” Naveed Jamali , national security expert and author of the book How to Catch a Russian Spy , told Salon in a call .
“ They can pay sole proprietor companies or send money to investment funds which can then hire or pay individuals.
” “ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of legality .
But while the illegality of that payment is questionable , the ethics isn ’ t , ” Jamali continued .
“ Even if it ’ s legal for somebody like Rudy to have a company that does business with foreign actors , it ’ s unethical for the president ’ s personal lawyer to be doing that .
But Trump , and we see this again and again , has created an incentive for people around him to put their hand out and sell their access to him.
” Another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dealings suggested to Salon that Giuliani might use WorldCapital not just to handle payroll expenses for Giuliani Partners and his other entities , but possibly to cover other payments as well .
In fact , Giuliani himself once provided a roadmap for how such a scheme would work during a live television appearance .
In a May 2018 Fox News interview , shortly after Giuliani took on President Trump as a client , he explained that Trump ’ s payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels did not qualify as a campaign finance violations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It ’ s not campaign money .
No campaign finance violation , ” Giuliani told Hannity , who then suggested , “ They funneled it through the law firm.
” Giuliani concurred .
“ Funneled it through the law firm , and then the president repaid it , ” he said .
“ That was money that was paid by his lawyer , the way I would do , out of his law firm funds , ” Giuliani continued .
Giuliani elaborated on his personal experience with such an arrangement : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ care of things like this , like I take care of this with my clients .
I don ’ t burden them with every single thing that comes along .
These are busy people.
” Cohen later went to prison for those payments , which were campaign finance violations he committed on behalf of his client , who is now the president .
Cohen is now out on house arrest .
This June , Giuliani brought the Stormy Daniels payments up again .
“ That crime was complete bullshit , ” he told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sudden ouster of Geoffrey Berman as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York .
At the time , Berman was apparently investigating Giuliani , until he was forced out at Attorney General Bill Barr ’ s request .
“ We don ’ t prosecute people for personal sex things — you don ’ t do that shit , ” Giuliani said , dismissing speculation that Trump would be tried for the same crime as Cohen after he leaves office .
Around the time of his 2018 remarks to Hannity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the prestigious New York law firm Greenberg Traurig , Giuliani met Ukrainian-born entrepreneur Lev Parnas .
That connection was apparently made through Jon Sale , a South Florida attorney and former Justice Department colleague of Giuliani .
Sale told Salon that he believed the connection happened in April or May 2018 .
Giuliani , who sustains a remarkably lavish lifestyle — and who last August hired a personal communications aide , Christianné Allen — says that he has represented Trump free of charge after leaving Greenberg .
He also claims to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concluded an extended , expensive and openly bitter divorce last December , shortly before Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives .
There are only a few known data points for Giuliani ’ s income .
One is the PPP loan ; another is a mysterious $ 500,000 investment he received in 2018 .
Not long after Giuliani left his job at Greenberg gig , he received $ 500,000 related to a vague business arrangement with Fraud Guarantee LLC , an identity-protection business created by Parnas and Fruman , the two men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he was contracted to act as the face of Fraud Guarantee , as he did in his previous role with identity protection firm LifeLock .
For this service Giuliani supposedly charged Parnas and Fruman half a million dollars , which he received — but not through Fraud Guarantee .
Instead , a New York attorney paid Giuliani the $ 500,000 in September 2018 , purportedly as a loan or investment on behalf of Fraud Guarantee , according to public reports and people involved , with the understanding that the money would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ company upon its success .
A lawyer and associate of Giuliani ’ s told Salon that around the time Giuliani accepted the money , he was warned in writing , and with evidence , that Fraud Guarantee — a company that essentially had never existed — should be vetted carefully .
He took the money anyway .
Two months later , Parnas and Fruman began running political errands in Ukraine on Giuliani ’ s behalf .
It is not clear whether or how Giuliani was paying them .
His own $ 500,000 payment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of events , many of them masterminded by Giuliani , that over the next year ultimately led to Trump ’ s impeachment .
All parties involved agree that Giuliani was not paid the $ 500,000 directly , but indirectly through his firm , Giuliani Partners .
Those funds — if Giuliani claimed them — would then have been routed to him through WorldCapital Payroll .
Giuliani has not been charged with any crime .
A lawyer for Lev Parnas did not reply to Salon ’ s request for comment .
Jon Sale did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for comment .
Igor Fruman could not immediately be reached for comment .

Giuliani’s company acquired its loan from Signature Bank, which at one point came under scrutiny for Trump family ties.
Additional reporting was contributed by Kathleen O’Neill.
A payroll company owned by Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, took between $150,000 and $350,000 in taxpayer-backed emergency small business loans this spring. It’s unclear what Giuliani did with the money.
The loan reveals a previously unreported, 18-year-old company owned by Giuliani. A Salon investigation offers new insight into mechanisms of the former New York mayor and federal prosecutor’s elaborate and purposefully obscure business, income and payment arrangements, which have reportedly been the subject of subpoenas from federal investigators in the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani initially told Salon he was ignorant of the purpose of this company, which has handled payroll needs across more than 18 years and lists him as CEO. Financial experts tell Salon that one of two scenarios is likely true: Either Giuliani directly employs a number of people through this unknown company, and pays them substantial salaries, or the company misrepresented its finances to the government when it applied for the loan — which would likely constitute fraud, a felony.
Independent journalist Wendy Siegelman appears to have been the first to report both the company and the loan.
According to government records, the loan, which was part of the Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program coronavirus relief package, was awarded on April 28 to a company called World Capital Payroll Corp., a registered “S Corp” headquartered at 445 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Those records show that the company received between $150,000 and $350,000 in taxpayer-backed federal funds, which can be fully forgiven by the government if the company proves they were put toward payroll and related expenses. (Giuliani’s new private law firm is registered at that same address.)
Importantly, in order to receive a loan amount in that range, a company was required to prove that it spent between $720,000 and $1.68 million on payroll and employee benefits. Because the SBA caps eligible salary amounts at $100,000, this means that World Capital Payroll would have had to directly employ between seven and 16 people, roughly speaking, in 2019 — and paid them all $100,000 or more for their services.
In order to prove eligibility to their lender, applicants must submit official tax and payroll forms.
According to PPP databases, however, World Capital Payroll did not report having any employees or any jobs saved. That in itself is not entirely uncommon. It is unclear, however, who else the company may directly employ other than Giuliani himself, who did not reply when asked that question several times over several days through various points of contact.
Multiple financial experts and PPP lenders told Salon that business owners cannot use PPP money to pay employees of separate businesses they own. Owners would need to submit separate applications for each entity that has its own tax ID. It is not clear whether World Capital Payroll Corp has any subsidiaries with employees, and if so, it is not clear why Giuliani would not recall such a company.
World Capital acquired its loan through Signature Bank, which at one point came under scrutiny from financial officials for loans made while it had ties to the Trump family as well as the family of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
World Capital Payroll classified itself under “other financial vehicle” on its loan application, even though PPP applications offer “payroll services” as an option. That choice puzzled financial experts who spoke with Salon, and one SBA official described it as “weird.”
(About three out of every 10,000 companies that applied for a PPP loan categorized themselves under “other financial vehicle.”)
New York state’s business registry lists WorldCapital Payroll Corp, with no space between the first two words, with Giuliani as CEO. In a call with Salon, Giuliani confirmed that it was the same company. The reason for the discrepancy in spelling was not immediately clear. The company lists different addresses on its official New York registry and its PPP loan: its New York address is at an office of Giuliani Partners; the PPP address is the office of Giuliani’s personal law firm.
Giuliani incorporated WorldCapital Payroll Corp in Delaware on Jan. 8, 2002, the same day he registered Giuliani Partners and Giuliani Safety & Security in New York, and just over a week after entering the private sector following two terms as mayor of New York City. Before that, Giuliani had worked at the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan for eight years, including more than five years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he became famous for prosecuting the mob and white collar crime.
Two days after incorporating in Delaware, on Jan. 10, 2002, Giuliani registered WorldCapital in the state of New York. According to the Delaware listing, WorldCapital Payroll is a stock corporation authorized for 1,000 shares.
Asked what he used the PPP loan for, Giuliani told Salon in a text message, “get lost.”
“Write whatever lie you want to it’s a waste of time to communicate with you,” he added. Salon, he said, “hates the president,” and he, Giuliani, was “just collateral target.”
“No need to discuss this. I am comfortable that I follow the law and ethical rules. Knock yourself out,” he wrote.
According to multiple reports and individuals familiar with the case, Giuliani’s business dealings have been under investigation as part of a broad federal probe led by the FBI and the Southern District of New York, the office Giuliani once led. Last October his former business associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington as they waited to board an overseas flight, leading to the investigation into Giuliani. Those arrests were on unrelated campaign finance charges, but came just one day after the duo met Giuliani for drinks, and just as impeachment hearings were heating up in Congress.
Giuliani later called Salon back to offer more information, saying that he had in the meantime asked a corporate bookkeeper about WorldCapital.
In Giuliani’s telling, his bookkeeper had just explained to him the function of WorldCapital. This seems implausible, since Giuliani created and owns the company, and appears to have used it to process payroll to employees of a number of his global firms for the last 18 years. As stated above, to receive a PPP loan in the reported amount, the company was required to prove that directly employed between seven and 16 U.S. employees, at a minimum.
“It’s what’s called a ‘paymaster,'” Giuliani said, invoking a common term for a company that handles payrolls for multiple entities. Giuliani’s main known entity is his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners.
“We have three or four different companies,” he said. “A client will pay Giuliani Partners a fee and we’d keep it and run the business with it, and then we pay our employees with it, through the payroll company.”
WorldCapital “has no clients other than my companies or the people we subcontract with,” Giuliani said.
“I don’t take a salary from Giuliani Partners,” he added, explaining that he takes a cut of that firm’s profits after he pays his employees. His payments also go through WorldCapital Payroll, he said.
Giuliani may not draw a regular salary from Giuliani Partners LLC — which multiple reports have said has been the subject of federal investigation — but the law requires him to take one from WorldCapital Payroll. According to the SBA’s loan database, WorldCapital registered as an “S Corp” and is therefore required to pay all employees a “reasonable” salary tied to industry norms.
It’s unclear what salary Giuliani pays himself as CEO of WorldCapital Payroll. The PPP salary cap is $100,000 — any salary in excess of that amount must be reduced back to $100,000.
New York records show that the former LifeLock spokesman has a few active companies registered in the state: Giuliani Partners LLC and Giuliani Group LLC (both registered in January of 2002, around the same time as WorldCapital Payroll), Giuliani Security & Safety LLC (registered later that year) and two newer companies he formed last year, Giuliani Communications LLC (registered in November 2019) and what he described in a call as his personal law firm, Rudolph W. Giuliani PLLC (June 2019).
Giuliani said that he had established his personal law firm last year because a client at the time wanted money put in escrow. “I didn’t want Giuliani Partners to do it, because I know the ethical rules,” Giuliani said, declining to name the client or explain why it would be otherwise unethical.
“I’m just a country lawyer,” he added.
The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have independently reported that federal investigators have sought documents and correspondence in connection with Giuliani Partners — which Giuliani registered the same day he incorporated WorldCapital in Delaware — or “any related person or entity.” The Journal reported in November 2019 that a subpoena had targeted documents “related to any actual or potential payments, or agreements” with Giuliani. In May, Giuliani’s defense attorney, Robert Costello, told Rolling Stone he had seen “more than one subpoena with Giuliani’s name on it,” dismissing them as pressure tactics.
Giuliani denies any wrongdoing.
Giuliani also recalled to Salon, after the discussion with the bookkeeper, that his own paychecks are also processed through WorldCapital — the company he created and owns and has apparently used to process payments for a number of employees for nearly two decades. It’s unclear how Giuliani’s statements about WorldCapital, which he allegedly did not know much about, square with the fact that, as outlined above, the company would have had to prove to its lender that it had payroll expenses between $720,000 and $1.68 million in 2019 to qualify for the PPP loan it received.
Giuliani said last year that he had to borrow $100,000 from former colleague Marc Mukasey, because he needed help paying his taxes. He also settled an expensive divorce.
Brett Kappel, a top authority on lobbying and government ethics laws, told Salon that payroll companies often serve as a way to consolidate payments.
“An individual who owns multiple companies frequently sets up a separate payroll company to handle payments to individuals who may be employed by more than one company, particularly if the employees are overseas,” Kappel said. He added that Giuliani’s setup struck him as unusual. “I see a couple of problems here,” Kappel said. “First, why this company is an S Corp, and not an LLC. And second, why the payroll company is the direct recipient of the loans when it might only have the one legally required employee.”
Another financial expert expressed surprise at the decision to register an S Corp in New York City, which uniquely puts an additional tax on those entities. “There aren’t many S Corps in the city,” he said.
S Corps, Kappel explained, are frequently sole proprietorships that offer revenue flexibility and income tax benefits. S Corps do not pay income tax — income and losses are divided among and passed along to shareholders, who report them individually on their personal tax returns. The arrangement provides an owner a number of “sliders” to manipulate when calculating annual tax liability.
“An S Corp is a pass-through entity — income passes through, typically to a single person, and it doesn’t give you the same level of liability protections as an LLC,” Kappel said.
Kappel’s second question — why Giuliani’s payroll company directly received a PPP loan — appears important. An SBA official and multiple financial experts told Salon that because PPP loans are allocated to a company by its tax identification number, a company can only put those funds toward paying its own employees. In other words, Giuliani could not legally use a loan received by WorldCapital to pay employees of his other companies.
Asked whether it would be feasible to misrepresent payroll information, a PPP expert at a national lender told Salon that “pretty much anything” was possible in the program’s first weeks.
“At the beginning, it was like a free-for-all,” the expert told Salon. “They tightened it up later, but in those early days you could basically just write your information down on a napkin and send it in.”
While it would be difficult for business owners to fraudulently represent themselves to a national lender, the employee said, such a scheme would be easier if they approached a small lender, especially one they were familiar with. That would be fraud, the expert said, a conclusion shared by all government and private financial experts consulted for this article.
For one example of known fraud, the employee pointed to federal prosecutions where PPP borrowers tried to defraud the government by creating fictitious companies out of thin air. It is unclear whether the spelling discrepancy between WorldCapital Payroll and World Capital Payroll is material or a mistake, though both companies share addresses with Giuliani entities. There is no World Capital Payroll in New York state records.
Giuliani did not respond to questions about how WorldCapital distributed its taxpayer-backed PPP money. If Giuliani does employ other individuals or contractors through WorldCapital, he did not divulge who those people or entities were, what payroll-processing services they provided for him, or what their salaries were.
When the SBA official was told that WorldCapital Payroll had categorized itself as “other financial vehicle,” not as a “payroll services” company, but as an “other financial vehicle,” the official called the decision “weird” and suggested a review of the lender.
(Of the 645,220 small businesses to receive PPP loans of $150,000 or higher, only 210 of them were classified as “other financial vehicles.” Most of those appear to be either erroneous classifications or financial services companies such as investment firms and fund managers. Companies that engage in speculation, lending, investment or rental real estate are ineligible for PPP loans.)
WorldCapital Payroll’s lender was Signature Bank, established in 2001, which lists 31 offices in the New York metropolitan area, Connecticut and California. It is a small institution, not listed among the SBA’s top 100 most active lenders as of June 30, 2020.
Signature was featured in a lengthy 2018 New York Times article as the Trump family’s “go-to” bank, however. When Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney, needed $17 million to purchase a Manhattan apartment building in 2015, he turned to Signature. Signature also backed Trump’s Florida golf course and lent money to Jared Kushner and his father, real estate developer Charles Kushner. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump (who is married to Jared Kushner), sat on the bank’s board of directors when those loans were extended.
Notably, none of Giuliani’s other companies mentioned above received a federal PPP loan. It’s unclear why only WorldCapital — the one company he owns that does not have “Giuliani” in its name — applied for and received federal funds. (A number of websites allow you to search the PPP database by company name.)
Giuliani Partners, which is reportedly the subject of a federal criminal inquiry, has had several foreign clients over the years, including in Ukraine, as well as a gold trader connected to a Justice Department investigation into a Turkish bank.
“One of the things that Russians and other foreign actors are good at is moving money into the United States,” Naveed Jamali, national security expert and author of the book How to Catch a Russian Spy, told Salon in a call. “They can pay sole proprietor companies or send money to investment funds which can then hire or pay individuals.”
“It’s an indirect payment that skirts the line of legality. But while the illegality of that payment is questionable, the ethics isn’t,” Jamali continued. “Even if it’s legal for somebody like Rudy to have a company that does business with foreign actors, it’s unethical for the president’s personal lawyer to be doing that. But Trump, and we see this again and again, has created an incentive for people around him to put their hand out and sell their access to him.”
Another person familiar with Giuliani’s business dealings suggested to Salon that Giuliani might use WorldCapital not just to handle payroll expenses for Giuliani Partners and his other entities, but possibly to cover other payments as well.
In fact, Giuliani himself once provided a roadmap for how such a scheme would work during a live television appearance.
In a May 2018 Fox News interview, shortly after Giuliani took on President Trump as a client, he explained that Trump’s payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels did not qualify as a campaign finance violations because they went through a side channel.
“It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation,” Giuliani told Hannity, who then suggested, “They funneled it through the law firm.”
Giuliani concurred. “Funneled it through the law firm, and then the president repaid it,” he said.
“That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds,” Giuliani continued.
Giuliani elaborated on his personal experience with such an arrangement: “Michael [Cohen] would take care of things like this, like I take care of this with my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.”
Cohen later went to prison for those payments, which were campaign finance violations he committed on behalf of his client, who is now the president. Cohen is now out on house arrest.
This June, Giuliani brought the Stormy Daniels payments up again.
“That crime was complete bullshit,” he told the New York Daily News when discussing the sudden ouster of Geoffrey Berman as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. At the time, Berman was apparently investigating Giuliani, until he was forced out at Attorney General Bill Barr’s request.
“We don’t prosecute people for personal sex things — you don’t do that shit,” Giuliani said, dismissing speculation that Trump would be tried for the same crime as Cohen after he leaves office.
Around the time of his 2018 remarks to Hannity, after which Giuliani abruptly left his position at the prestigious New York law firm Greenberg Traurig, Giuliani met Ukrainian-born entrepreneur Lev Parnas. That connection was apparently made through Jon Sale, a South Florida attorney and former Justice Department colleague of Giuliani. Sale told Salon that he believed the connection happened in April or May 2018.
(Sale, who shares with Giuliani a Venezuelan client who is under investigation in a billion-dollar federal money laundering probe, briefly represented Giuliani during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings. He stepped aside shortly after Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman were arrested at Dulles airport last October.)
Giuliani, who sustains a remarkably lavish lifestyle — and who last August hired a personal communications aide, Christianné Allen — says that he has represented Trump free of charge after leaving Greenberg. He also claims to have borrowed money to pay taxes, and concluded an extended, expensive and openly bitter divorce last December, shortly before Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives.
There are only a few known data points for Giuliani’s income. One is the PPP loan; another is a mysterious $500,000 investment he received in 2018.
Not long after Giuliani left his job at Greenberg gig, he received $500,000 related to a vague business arrangement with Fraud Guarantee LLC, an identity-protection business created by Parnas and Fruman, the two men currently under federal indictment.
Giuliani claims that he was contracted to act as the face of Fraud Guarantee, as he did in his previous role with identity protection firm LifeLock. For this service Giuliani supposedly charged Parnas and Fruman half a million dollars, which he received — but not through Fraud Guarantee.
Instead, a New York attorney paid Giuliani the $500,000 in September 2018, purportedly as a loan or investment on behalf of Fraud Guarantee, according to public reports and people involved, with the understanding that the money would be recouped in funds or stock in the company upon its success.
A lawyer and associate of Giuliani’s told Salon that around the time Giuliani accepted the money, he was warned in writing, and with evidence, that Fraud Guarantee — a company that essentially had never existed — should be vetted carefully. He took the money anyway.
Two months later, Parnas and Fruman began running political errands in Ukraine on Giuliani’s behalf. It is not clear whether or how Giuliani was paying them. His own $500,000 payment appears to have kicked off a series of events, many of them masterminded by Giuliani, that over the next year ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.
All parties involved agree that Giuliani was not paid the $500,000 directly, but indirectly through his firm, Giuliani Partners. Those funds — if Giuliani claimed them — would then have been routed to him through WorldCapital Payroll.
Giuliani has not been charged with any crime. A lawyer for Lev Parnas did not reply to Salon’s request for comment. Jon Sale did not reply to Salon’s request for comment. Igor Fruman could not immediately be reached for comment.
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truthout--2020-09-17--Trump Falsely Claims COVID Death Toll Is Not So Bad If You Leave Out Blue States

In yet another attempt to evade responsibility for the nation ’ s disastrous coronavirus response as the U.S. death toll approaches 200,000 , President Donald Trump late Wednesday said the fact that millions of Americans haven ’ t died of Covid-19 is a sign of success and declared , “ If you take the blue states out , we ’ re at a level that I don ’ t think anybody in the world would be at.
” Both morally obscene and factually inaccurate , the president ’ s comment drew immediate backlash from lawmakers and other observers , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will “ be remembered as one of the most callous sentiments ever uttered by an American president… .
if it ’ s remembered at all.
” Rep. Don Beyer ( D-Va. ) had a similar reaction , tweeting , “ This is quite simply one of the most appalling and inhuman statements ever uttered by an American president.
” Trump has repeatedly sought to blame Democratic governors for his administration ’ s failures to combat the coronavirus pandemic , which has now infected more than 6.6 million people in the U.S. and killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s statement during a press briefing Wednesday marked what critics described as a grotesque escalation in rhetoric , explicitly devaluing the lives of people living in blue states ravaged by the virus .
“ Trump thinks of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans like a poll number or a stock market price , ” said Orin Kerr , a law professor at the University of California , Berkeley .
“ He cares only about how it makes him look , especially to his supporters.
” Pointing to a graphic purporting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toll would likely be in the 1.5 to 2.2 million range had the nation done nothing in response to the pandemic , Trump told reporters , “ We ’ re below that substantially , and we ’ ll see what comes out.
” “ If the not-so-good job was done , you ’ d be between 1.5 million — I remember these numbers so well — and 2.2 million .
That ’ s quite a difference , ” the president said .
“ So we ’ re down in this territory , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 240,000 projected death toll displayed on the chart .
“ And that ’ s despite the fact that the blue states had tremendous death rates .
If you take the blue states out , we ’ re at a level that I don ’ t think anybody in the world would be at .
We ’ re really at a very low level .
But some of the states , they were blue states and blue-state-managed.
” As the Washington Post ’ s Philip Bump detailed late Wednesday , Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be among the lowest in the world if blue-state deaths were subtracted from the total is completely false .
“ It is true that the early surge in deaths was heavily weighted toward states that had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 , ” Bump wrote .
“ New York and New Jersey in particular recorded hundreds of deaths a day in April , quickly contributing to the country ’ s total number of fatalities.
” “ Over time , though , the percentage of total deaths that have occurred in blue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ The most recent data , through Tuesday , indicates that about 53 percent of deaths have occurred in blue states — meaning that 47 percent have occurred in red ones .
In other words , more than 90,000 deaths have occurred in red states .
If that were the country ’ s total , we would have seen the second-most number of deaths globally , trailing only Brazil .
”

Critics described the remark as a grotesque escalation in rhetoric, devaluing the lives of those living in blue states.
In yet another attempt to evade responsibility for the nation’s disastrous coronavirus response as the U.S. death toll approaches 200,000, President Donald Trump late Wednesday said the fact that millions of Americans haven’t died of Covid-19 is a sign of success and declared, “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”
Both morally obscene and factually inaccurate, the president’s comment drew immediate backlash from lawmakers and other observers, one of whom said Trump’s remark will “be remembered as one of the most callous sentiments ever uttered by an American president…. if it’s remembered at all.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) had a similar reaction, tweeting, “This is quite simply one of the most appalling and inhuman statements ever uttered by an American president.”
Trump has repeatedly sought to blame Democratic governors for his administration’s failures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, which has now infected more than 6.6 million people in the U.S. and killed at least 196,600. But the president’s statement during a press briefing Wednesday marked what critics described as a grotesque escalation in rhetoric, explicitly devaluing the lives of people living in blue states ravaged by the virus.
“Trump thinks of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans like a poll number or a stock market price,” said Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “He cares only about how it makes him look, especially to his supporters.”
The deaths in the blue states don’t count is one probably the sickest and most honest belief I’ve heard Trump express. — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 16, 2020
Pointing to a graphic purporting to show that the U.S. coronavirus death toll would likely be in the 1.5 to 2.2 million range had the nation done nothing in response to the pandemic, Trump told reporters, “We’re below that substantially, and we’ll see what comes out.”
“If the not-so-good job was done, you’d be between 1.5 million — I remember these numbers so well — and 2.2 million. That’s quite a difference,” the president said.
“So we’re down in this territory,” Trump continued, pointing to the 100,000 to 240,000 projected death toll displayed on the chart. “And that’s despite the fact that the blue states had tremendous death rates. If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level. But some of the states, they were blue states and blue-state-managed.”
Praising his own virus response as deaths near 200,000, Trump says, “if you take the blue states out, we’re at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.” pic.twitter.com/ezAU5IJIcQ — The American Independent (@AmerIndependent) September 16, 2020
As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump detailed late Wednesday, Trump’s claim that the U.S. coronavirus death toll would be among the lowest in the world if blue-state deaths were subtracted from the total is completely false.
“It is true that the early surge in deaths was heavily weighted toward states that had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016,” Bump wrote. “New York and New Jersey in particular recorded hundreds of deaths a day in April, quickly contributing to the country’s total number of fatalities.”
“Over time, though, the percentage of total deaths that have occurred in blue states has dropped,” Bump continued. “The most recent data, through Tuesday, indicates that about 53 percent of deaths have occurred in blue states — meaning that 47 percent have occurred in red ones. In other words, more than 90,000 deaths have occurred in red states. If that were the country’s total, we would have seen the second-most number of deaths globally, trailing only Brazil.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
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truthout--2020-09-17--Another Day of COVID, Another Failed Stimulus, Another Thousand Deaths

Another COVID day of death and dismay , another day of Republican indifference , greed and spite .
“ Democrats are ‘ heartless , ’ ” Donald Trump tweeted yesterday during his daily mid-morning rant , repeating his habit of confessing to his own sins each time he lobs an accusation at Democrats .
“ They don ’ t want to give STIMULUS PAYMENTS to people who desperately need the money , and whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China.
” “ … whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ MAGA Yoda he is , making sense he is not , yes… and why put ‘ heartless ’ in quotes , as if he ’ s chucking up air quotes like Dr .
Evil ?
We will never know , but the hot part came with the last line : “ Go for the much higher numbers , Republicans , it all comes back to the USA anyway ( one way or another ! )
.
” “ Go for much higher numbers , Republicans ” was a call for Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money into the stimulus package , and it was the squeal of retreat Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been waiting for .
Speaker Pelosi ’ s stimulus “ negotiations ” with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell devolved into little more than performative farce before collapsing altogether weeks ago .
House Democrats have an aid bill passed and ready to go , but the GOP in the White House and Senate are so belligerently fractured they can scarcely agree on whether to get blueberries with the pancakes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate Republicans into accepting a higher price tag for the stimulus bill was followed up later that afternoon through more standard press channels with an unmistakable test balloon : A proffered plan by the center-right Trojan horse Problem Solvers Coalition would basically lop the Democrats ’ proposal in half , screwing pretty much everyone seeking aid while accomplishing the only important part : Giving Republicans running for re-election a rag they could wave before the doom of November descends .
“ See , we did something , vote me !
” Pelosi has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this half-a-loaf proposal .
Like their GOP counterparts , those vulnerable red-state House Democrats the Speaker has so assiduously protected also need something to show the folks back home , lest they lose their seats — and the House majority — to a riptide of “ Radical Nancy !
” nonsense .
Plus , and not for nothing , this tussle has been going on for weeks in the teeth of a ruinous pandemic .
When folks need shoes and food , something beats nothing every time .
“ We are encouraged that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on shortchanging the massive needs of the American people , President Trump is now calling on Republicans to ‘ go for the much higher numbers ’ in the next coronavirus relief package , ” the Speaker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday in a joint statement .
“ We look forward to hearing from the President ’ s negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway.
” The bonhomie lasted just long enough for the professional wreckers on the far right of Congress to clear their throats and step to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set the tone by using big words that all came down to “ No ” : “ If the number gets too high , anything that got passed in the Senate will be passed mostly with Democrat votes and a handful of Republicans so it ’ s going to have to stay within a realistic range if we want to maximize , optimize the number of Republican senators that will vote for it.
” Realistic maximize optimize nope .
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy matched Thune ’ s gloomy assessment with 90 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to see what ’ s in it , but I think it ’ s difficult.
” As for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , well , he was busy : “ As Covid-19 relief for jobless and hungry Americans , collapsing small businesses , and state and local governments languishes in the Senate GOP ’ s legislative graveyard , Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday further advanced his years-long project of dragging U.S. federal courts to the right by ramming through three more of President Donald Trump ’ s lifetime judicial nominees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” With an election that will decide the immediate fate of the White House , the Senate and the House of Representatives looming just 47 tiny days away , fury at vicious Republican intransigence has begun to give way to something close to horrified awe .
Are these people so dug into their clotted ideological trenches that 200,000 deaths and tens of million unemployed still won ’ t move them ?
Politicians used to be known for having at least a semblance of enlightened election year self-interest , yet even that appears to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the world is Trump thinking ?
” asks Derek Thompson for The Atlantic .
“ I don ’ t ask the question rhetorically .
I desperately want to know , as I can not imagine why an incumbent president , without any ideological commitment to government restraint , facing imminent judgment over the struggling economy , would lose interest in stimulating it.
” Nobody can answer that with any degree of certainty , but I can hazard a few guesses : Trump does not care , understand , or care to understand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congressional Republicans like McCarthy and Thune enjoy safe seats , and so lose nothing by standing tall for self-destructive right-wing economic theory .
And Mitch ?
He has gotten his portion of the Devil ’ s bargain he struck with the monster in the Oval .
The young , far-right judges McConnell has appointed to the federal bench will defend the standing of entrenched wealth and white power for generations to come .
All the while , the people suffer .
It makes you wonder just how long this perilous neglect can last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this whole machinery flies apart in a shrapnel storm that could tear the country to bits .

Part of the Series Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
Another COVID day of death and dismay, another day of Republican indifference, greed and spite.
“Democrats are ‘heartless,’” Donald Trump tweeted yesterday during his daily mid-morning rant, repeating his habit of confessing to his own sins each time he lobs an accusation at Democrats. “They don’t want to give STIMULUS PAYMENTS to people who desperately need the money, and whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China.”
“… whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China.” Mmm, yes, President racist MAGA Yoda he is, making sense he is not, yes… and why put ‘heartless’ in quotes, as if he’s chucking up air quotes like Dr. Evil? We will never know, but the hot part came with the last line: “Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).”
“Go for much higher numbers, Republicans” was a call for Trump’s congressional allies to agree to put more money into the stimulus package, and it was the squeal of retreat Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been waiting for.
Speaker Pelosi’s stimulus “negotiations” with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell devolved into little more than performative farce before collapsing altogether weeks ago. House Democrats have an aid bill passed and ready to go, but the GOP in the White House and Senate are so belligerently fractured they can scarcely agree on whether to get blueberries with the pancakes.
Trump’s push to force Senate Republicans into accepting a higher price tag for the stimulus bill was followed up later that afternoon through more standard press channels with an unmistakable test balloon: A proffered plan by the center-right Trojan horse Problem Solvers Coalition would basically lop the Democrats’ proposal in half, screwing pretty much everyone seeking aid while accomplishing the only important part: Giving Republicans running for re-election a rag they could wave before the doom of November descends. “See, we did something, vote me!”
Pelosi has stout political reasons to be open to this half-a-loaf proposal. Like their GOP counterparts, those vulnerable red-state House Democrats the Speaker has so assiduously protected also need something to show the folks back home, lest they lose their seats — and the House majority — to a riptide of “Radical Nancy!” nonsense. Plus, and not for nothing, this tussle has been going on for weeks in the teeth of a ruinous pandemic. When folks need shoes and food, something beats nothing every time.
“We are encouraged that after months of the Senate Republicans insisting on shortchanging the massive needs of the American people, President Trump is now calling on Republicans to ‘go for the much higher numbers’ in the next coronavirus relief package,” the Speaker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday in a joint statement. “We look forward to hearing from the President’s negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway.”
The bonhomie lasted just long enough for the professional wreckers on the far right of Congress to clear their throats and step to a camera. Senate Majority Whip John Thune set the tone by using big words that all came down to “No”: “If the number gets too high, anything that got passed in the Senate will be passed mostly with Democrat votes and a handful of Republicans so it’s going to have to stay within a realistic range if we want to maximize, optimize the number of Republican senators that will vote for it.”
Realistic maximize optimize nope. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy matched Thune’s gloomy assessment with 90 percent fewer words: “We’d have to see what’s in it, but I think it’s difficult.”
With an election looming just 47 tiny days away, fury at vicious Republican intransigence has begun to give way to something close to horrified awe.
As for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, well, he was busy: “As Covid-19 relief for jobless and hungry Americans, collapsing small businesses, and state and local governments languishes in the Senate GOP’s legislative graveyard, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday further advanced his years-long project of dragging U.S. federal courts to the right by ramming through three more of President Donald Trump’s lifetime judicial nominees and teed up votes on several others.”
With an election that will decide the immediate fate of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives looming just 47 tiny days away, fury at vicious Republican intransigence has begun to give way to something close to horrified awe. Are these people so dug into their clotted ideological trenches that 200,000 deaths and tens of million unemployed still won’t move them? Politicians used to be known for having at least a semblance of enlightened election year self-interest, yet even that appears to have fallen to dust.
“What in the world is Trump thinking?” asks Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. “I don’t ask the question rhetorically. I desperately want to know, as I cannot imagine why an incumbent president, without any ideological commitment to government restraint, facing imminent judgment over the struggling economy, would lose interest in stimulating it.”
Nobody can answer that with any degree of certainty, but I can hazard a few guesses: Trump does not care, understand, or care to understand the dire circumstances arrayed before him. Congressional Republicans like McCarthy and Thune enjoy safe seats, and so lose nothing by standing tall for self-destructive right-wing economic theory.
And Mitch? He has gotten his portion of the Devil’s bargain he struck with the monster in the Oval. The young, far-right judges McConnell has appointed to the federal bench will defend the standing of entrenched wealth and white power for generations to come.
All the while, the people suffer. It makes you wonder just how long this perilous neglect can last before the bearings finally freeze, and this whole machinery flies apart in a shrapnel storm that could tear the country to bits.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.