Anybody see the story that Kennedy's retirement was pay for Trump waving the fines against Deutsche Bank, Kennedy's son worked at Deutsche bank and was Trump's go to guy.
Yes, and we added it to the list of shit we don’t give a fuck about.
You'd be surprise how many dumb-asses ran with that conspiracy theory.
I guess when there's nothing to chew on, the only thing you can do is throw everything at the wall to see if anything stick, and if that doesn't work, you put glue on everything and throw them again.
It IS amusing to see the WaPo calling the desperate "progressives" out for their blatant bullshit though.
The thinly sourced theories about Trump’s loans and Justice Kennedy’s son
by
Salvador Rizzo | July 12, 2018
“Just to state this: Justice Kennedy’s son gave a billion dollar loan to Trump when no one would give him a dime, and Justice Kennedy has been ruling in favor of the Trump Administration position for 2 years as the Court decides 5-4 case after 5-4 case.”
— Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, in a tweet, June 29, 2018
“The circumstances of Justice Kennedy’s resignation must be investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee before any replacement is considered. The Constitution does not give Trump the power to use underhanded means to induce Supreme Court resignations.”
— Richard W. Painter (Minn.), Democratic primary candidate for U.S. Senate, in a tweet, June 30, 2018
“Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.
“During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.”
— Reporting by the New York Times, June 28, 2018
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s decision to retire from the Supreme Court set off a wave of speculation, much of it focused on a past business relationship between Donald Trump and one of Kennedy’s sons.
Tanden’s tweet implies that Kennedy’s independence was compromised because his son Justin had business with Trump while he worked at Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009.
Painter’s tweet, which links to
a brief article in the New Republic discussing the same Trump connection with Justin Kennedy, implies the president may have used “underhanded means” to get the justice to retire.
Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank and Justin Kennedy has been documented over the years in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and other media. After the justice on June 27 announced his decision to retire, the New York Times renewed that focus.
“During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history,”
the Times reported June 28, adding that the justice’s son “worked closely with Trump.”
This reporting informed the New Republic article that Painter linked to and seems to have inspired Tanden’s tweet, although she layered on grave inferences that don’t appear in the Times article.
But there are several reasons this supposed fishiness doesn’t make sense.
Justice Kennedy will be 82 later this month, well past retirement age. He’s a Republican appointee creating a vacancy for a Republican president. He could have been voting in favor of Trump’s positions because he agreed with them. Although he voted with the liberal justices on numerous cases, and ruled to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015, Kennedy has a rightward bent. He wrote the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in
Citizens United v. FEC and voted to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act in 2012. Considering his age, party affiliation and conservative views on many issues, it’s not clear why Kennedy would have needed some secret inducement to create a vacancy for Trump.
Moreover, from 1998 to 2009, it would have been impossible for Justin Kennedy — then at Deutsche Bank — to know that Trump would be the president appointing a replacement for his father on the Court in 2018.
Is there any meat on the bone to justify the innuendo that Painter and Tanden seemed to be aiming at Kennedy and his son?
The Pinocchio Test
Justice Kennedy is an octogenarian who said he was retiring from the Supreme Court to spend more time with his family. He’s a Republican appointee leaving a vacancy for a Republican president to fill. He’s a conservative jurist with liberal tendencies, not the other way around, so it’s not inherently suspicious that he would rule for Trump or want to see a conservative judge fill his seat.
It would be explosive if Kennedy’s decision to vote a certain way or to retire was based on Deutsche Bank’s dealings with Trump more than a decade ago. Scratching below the surface, there’s no evidence to justify these theories. The New York Times article doesn’t supply it. It says Deutsche Bank loaned Trump more than $1 billion “during” Justin Kennedy’s tenure, not that he was signing the checks or that any rules were broken. What we could piece together about Justin Kennedy’s history doesn’t support these theories, either.
Standing alone, the tweets from Painter and Tanden are incendiary and worthy of Four Pinocchios. Painter says he wasn’t questioning the Kennedys’ actions. Uncorrected, his tweet leaves a different impression, since it relies on a New Republic article raising questions about the justice, his son and Trump.
Four Pinocchios
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-justice-kennedys-son/?utm_term=.a5ccb86c405d