Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 6, 2017 Secret side agreements are a common maneuver by corporate law firms. Here’s how they work. An agreement that is legal and passes the smell test is drafted and submitted to a court or a regulatory body for public consumption. Then, a separate, secret side agreement is written and signed by both sides and it contains all of the smelly, shady, ethically questionable hard details on how the original agreement will be carried out. Donna Brazile, the former interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 presidential campaign, has written a new book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House,” and has revealed the secret side agreement that the DNC had with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In 2015, Hillary Clinton’s campaign set up a joint fundraising committee called the Hillary … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 1, 2017 Yesterday, the New York Times ran an error-filled article on the indictment of Trump adviser George Papadopoulos that seemed intent on cementing the notion that Russia hacked thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and then offered those hacked emails to the Trump campaign to smear dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. The problem was that the actual Federal indictment unsealed on Monday against Papadopoulos made no such claim regarding emails hacked at the Democratic National Committee. Where the thousands of emails referenced by the Russians actually came from was not spelled out in the indictment. They could have just as easily been emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s unsecure server in the basement of her home during her time as Secretary of State. Instead of correcting its own erroneous reporting, today’s New York Times is blasting … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 31, 2017 The digital front page of today’s New York Times carries this dramatically misleading headline: “Trump Campaign Got Early Word Russia Had Democrats’ Emails.” Within the article, there are six separate references suggesting that the unsealed indictment against Trump adviser George Papadopoulos supports the premise that the Russians had the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), before the emails became publicly known. For example, New York Times reporter Scott Shane makes the following references in the article: “Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton…” And this: “That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. The new court filings provided the first clear evidence … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 25, 2017 Last evening, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell on the already discredited leadership of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) under its former Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The Post reported that Marc Elias, a law partner at the politically connected law firm Perkins Coie, retained the company, Fusion GPS, that compiled the infamous Russian Dossier on Donald Trump. The Post said he did so on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. (The current leadership of the DNC has stated that it had no knowledge of these actions.) After the Washington Post story broke, New York Times reporters Ken Vogel and Maggie Haberman Tweeted that they had been lied to by those involved. Haberman Tweeted: “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Vogel Tweeted: “When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 25, 2017 Millions of Americans have quietly been pondering for months what a President Mike Pence would be like should Donald Trump be impeached or resign. Yesterday they found out and it’s not a pretty picture. After the U.S. Senate tied 50-50 on a vote yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote to keep the nation’s courthouse doors closed to the customers of the Too-Big-to-Fail banks on Wall Street – effectively strengthening the no law zone that already exists for these banks. The vote came about as a result of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issuing its final rule in July which would allow consumers who have been defrauded in financial transactions involving credit cards and bank accounts to have access to file a group action (known legally as a “class action”) using the nation’s courts. The CFPB was created … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 24, 2017 Matthew Garrahan dropped a bigger bombshell in the Financial Times yesterday than even he realizes. Garrahan named the law firm that had crafted a gag order in 1998 to silence two women from ever speaking about their encounters with Harvey Weinstein. One woman, Zelda Perkins, was an assistant to Weinstein in London and charged him with egregious sexual harassment. The other unnamed female colleague charged Weinstein with sexual assault. The two were paid $125,000 each and given an iron-clad gag order. The terms of the gag order were so confidential that the women were not even allowed to have a full copy of what they had agreed to, just a summary of some of its terms. The law firm representing Weinstein with the settlements and gag orders (officially called non-disclosure agreements) was Allen & Overy – the London derivatives powerhouse that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 23, 2017 Over the past month, with little media attention, both Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have received fines from regulatory bodies for failure to properly report their trading in derivatives – an opaque trading arena that played a significant role in bringing down both firms during the financial crisis. As reported by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2011, Citigroup received $2.5 trillion in cumulative, secret low cost loans from the Federal Reserve during the 2007-2010 financial crisis while Merrill received $1.9 trillion. These loans, many at almost zero interest rates, were made without the authorization or awareness of Congress. (See GAO chart below.) The loans to the two firms were on top of the publicly disclosed and Congress-approved TARP bailout funds. Significant portions of the money loaned to Citigroup and Merrill Lynch were authorized by the Federal Reserve to be funneled to the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 20, 2017  Last week Jim Rutenberg penned a column for the New York Times titled Facing Down the Network that Produced Harvey Weinstein. Rutenberg explored the reasons that Weinstein’s decades of sexually harassing women and charges of assaults had not made it to the front pages of newspapers sooner. Correctly calling it “something akin to a protection racket,” Rutenberg defined it as a “network of aggressive public relations flacks and lawyers who guard the secrets of those who employ them and keep their misdeeds out of public view.” That sentence brought to mind a 2009 Rachel Maddow program on MSNBC where she enumerated the ignominious historical milestones of the monster public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, capping the history by calling it the “p.r. firm from hell.” Among her litany of its p.r. projects, Maddow cited: “…when Blackwater killed those 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, they … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 18, 2017 America has now been through various iterations of “it’s time to stop bashing Wall Street” by writers who seem to easily get air time or plenty of print space to make their case. An OpEd in the New York Times today is the latest in this endless series. We’ll get to that column shortly, but first some necessary background. Wall Street did not accidentally run a barge aground and leave a small oil slick on the Hudson River. Wall Street did not accidentally release tainted lettuce that sickened a few dozen people. What Wall Street did was intentional and criminal: it financially engineered a toxic subprime house of cards which it knew from its own internal reviews was going to collapse; it then molded the toxic product into inscrutable bundles; it sold the bundles to unsuspecting investors around the globe while … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2017 In 2013, when a division of CIT served as a joint lead arranger for a $370 million senior secured credit facility to the Weinstein Company, an executive of the lender, Kevin Khanna, issued a statement effusively praising the management of the Weinstein Company, stating: “The Weinstein Co. is one of the premier Hollywood studios in the world and we are pleased to further expand our relationship with them through this recent financing. As a key player in the film financing sector, we pride ourselves in putting our knowledge to work on behalf of our clients to help them achieve their goals.” Today, the Weinstein Company stands as the premier poster boy for mismanagement of its brand, reputation and franchise as sexual assault and sexual harassment charges, stretching over three decades, have been lodged against its co-founder and key executive, Harvey Weinstein. … Continue reading →