The Full Belmonte, 12/31/2022
Pope Benedict XVI Dies
The German pope, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected in 2005 as a doctrinal conservative, but stunned the world by resigning in 2013 — the first to do so in centuries.
The first pope to step down in six centuries dies in retirement.
“Pope Benedict XVI, the eminent German theologian and conservative enforcer of Roman Catholic Church doctrine who broke with almost 600 years of tradition by resigning and then living for nearly a decade behind Vatican walls as a retired pope still clad in white robes, died on Saturday at the age of 95, the Vatican said.
Just as Benedict’s resignation in 2013 shook the Roman Catholic church to its core, his death again put the institution in little-charted territory.
A pope’s death customarily sets in a motion a conclave to choose a new leader of the church, but Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, was named when Benedict stepped down. It was Francis who on Wednesday announced the news of Benedict’s final decline to the world.
Now, after a life dedicated to maintaining order and tradition in the church, Benedict in death has put it into a moment of uncertainty, with questions about how and in what capacity he will be mourned, and whether a living pope will preside over the funeral of a deceased one.
Whatever ceremonies the Vatican ultimately decides on, the loss of Benedict will be particularly hard felt by church conservatives.
Even before his election as pope on April 19, 2005, his supporters saw him as their intellectual and spiritual north star, a leader who, as a powerful Vatican official, upheld church doctrine in the face of growing secularism and pressure to change to get more people into the pews.
Benedict’s critics are more likely to remember him as a crusher of dissent who did far too little to address sexual abuse in the church, stumbled in some of his public declarations and lacked the charisma of his predecessor, John Paul II.
Francis fired or demoted many of Benedict’s appointees, redirected the church’s priorities and adjusted its emphasis from setting and keeping boundaries to pastoral inclusivity.
Still, in some regards, Francis built on Benedict’s legacy, especially in addressing the child sexual abuse crisis. Benedict was the first pope to meet with victims, and he apologized for the abuse that was allowed to fester under John Paul II. He excoriated the ‘filth’ in the church and excommunicated some offending priests.
But abuse survivors and their advocates accused Benedict of having failed to go far enough in punishing several priests as a bishop in Germany, and in his handling of accusations against some priests as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office. He was also criticized as doing little to hold the hierarchy accountable for shielding — and so facilitating — child sexual abuse.
Benedict, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger, was ordained a priest in 1951, and named archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977, the same year that he became a cardinal. Four years later, Pope John Paul II summoned Cardinal Ratzinger to Rome, where he became the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office responsible for defending church orthodoxy, one of the Vatican’s most important positions.
He led the office for nearly 25 years.
After John Paul II died in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger was chosen as his successor. He took the name of a sixth-century monk, Benedict of Nurcia, who had founded monasteries and the Benedictine order, helping spread Christianity in Europe. The new pope, as Benedict XVI, would seek to re-evangelize a Europe that was struggling to maintain its faith.
Ultimately, Pope Benedict bowed out during a period of scandals and immense pressures. He cited his declining health, both ‘of mind and body.’ He had said that he resigned freely, and ‘for the good of the church.’
That resignation — the first by a pontiff since 1415 — is likely to be remembered as his most defining act.
He lived in retirement in a monastery on the Vatican grounds, mostly stepping back from public life and dedicating himself to prayer and meditation. Francis visited him and called him ‘a wise grandfather in the home,’ even as his supporters sought — and failed — to make him an alternative power center.” (New York Times)
Barbara Walters, a First Among TV Newswomen, Is Dead at 93
She broke barriers for women as a co-host of the “Today” show, a network evening news anchor and a creator of “The View,” all while gaining her own kind of celebrity.
Dec. 30, 2022
“Barbara Walters, who broke barriers for women as the first female co-host of the ‘Today’ show and the first female anchor of a network evening news program, and who as an interviewer of celebrities became one herself, helping to blur the line between news and entertainment, died on Friday. She was 93.
Her death was reported by ABC News, where she was a longtime anchor and a creator of the talk show ‘The View.’ Her publicist, Cindi Berger, said in an interview that Ms. Walters died at her home in Manhattan surrounded by loved ones. She did not give a cause.
Ms. Walters spent more than 50 years in front of the camera and, until she was 84, continued to appear on ‘The View.’ In one-on-one interviews, she was best known for delving, with genteel insistence, into the private lives and emotional states of movie stars, heads of state and other high-profile subjects.
Ms. Walters first made her mark on the ‘Today’ show on NBC, where she began appearing regularly on camera in 1964; she was officially named co-host a decade later. Her success kicked open the door for future network anchors like Jane Pauley, Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer.
Ms. Walters began at NBC as a writer in 1961, the token woman in the ‘Today’ writers’ room. When she left NBC for ABC in 1976 to be a co-anchor of the evening news with Harry Reasoner, she became known as the ‘million-dollar baby’ because of her five-year, $5 million contract.
The move to the co-anchor’s chair made her not only the highest-profile female journalist in television history, but also the highest-paid news anchor, male or female, and her arrival signaled something of a cultural shift: the moment when news anchors began to be seen less as infallible authority figures, in the Walter Cronkite mold, and more as celebrities. A disgruntled Mr. Reasoner privately dismissed her hiring as a gimmick.
Gimmick or not, the ABC experiment failed. Chemistry between the co-anchors was nonexistent, ratings remained low, and in 1978 Mr. Reasoner left for CBS, his original television home, and Ms. Walters’s role changed from co-anchor to contributor as the network instituted an all-male multiple-anchor format. Shortly after that she began contributing reports to ABC’s newsmagazine show ‘20/20.’ In 1984 she became the show’s permanent co-host alongside Hugh Downs, her old ‘Today’ colleague.
But it was her ‘Barbara Walters Specials’ more than anything else that made her a star, enshrining her as an indefatigable chronicler of the rich, the powerful and the infamous. The specials, which began in 1976, made Ms. Walters as famous, or nearly as famous, as the people she interviewed.
At a time when politicians tended to be reserved and celebrities elusive, Ms. Walters coaxed kings, presidents and matinee idols to answer startlingly intimate questions. She asked Jimmy Carter, shortly after he won the 1976 presidential election, if he and his wife slept in separate beds. (They did not.) She asked Prime Minister Morarji Desai of India whether it was true that he drank his own urine for medicinal purposes. (It was.)
Ms. Walters was a celebrity journalist who reveled in the role — driving a motorcycle with Sylvester Stallone, dancing the mambo with Patrick Swayze, riding a patrol boat with Fidel Castro across the Bay of Pigs. She was the reporter who urged Mr. Carter to ‘be good to us’ and asked the former White House intern Monica Lewinsky — in an interview that attracted some 50 million viewers — why she kept that stained blue dress that had figured in the sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton.
Throughout her career Ms. Walters raised eyebrows — and competitors’ ire — by courting high society and cultivating friendships with high-placed officials. The Shah of Iran was a friend; so were Roy Cohn and Brooke Astor. She was the only female television reporter on President Richard M. Nixon’s trip to China in 1972. When the former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan died in 1981, Ms. Walters lent his wife, Raquel, a black dress for the funeral.
Her ambition and competitive spirit never let up. She was in Vietnam on vacation when Michael Jackson died in 2009, and sped across 8,000 miles and many time zones to sit with the Jackson family at the memorial in Los Angeles — and to host a special tribute on ‘20/20.’ She continued to pop up in the gossip pages, notably when she tried to intervene in a vitriolic spat between her ‘View’ colleague Rosie O’Donnell and Donald J. Trump in 2007.
(Ms. Walters could be gushing when around Mr. Trump, comparing his family in one ‘20/20’ segment to ‘American royalty’ and, at one point, as Michael D’Antonio recounted in his 2015 Trump biography ‘Never Enough,’ asking him, ‘If you could be appointed president, and you didn’t have to run, would you like to be president?’)
‘The View’ was yet another ratings triumph for Ms. Walters, who created it with Bill Geddie and served as an executive producer in addition to frequently appearing on camera as a member of the show’s all-female panel, which over the years also included Whoopi Goldberg, Meredith Vieira and many others. The show, which is in its 24th season, is now seen in several countries and has inspired imitations.
From Hepburn to Arafat
The list of famous people Ms. Walters coaxed into going on camera with her is long. It includes Michael Jackson, Katharine Hepburn, Princess Grace of Monaco and Barbra Streisand. She interviewed every American president and first lady from Richard and Pat Nixon to Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, during his presidential campaign; world leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Boris N. Yeltsin, Yasir Arafat and Muammar el-Qaddafi; and famous criminal defendants like Claus von Bülow, Jean Harris, Mike Tyson, Mark David Chapman, and Erik and Lyle Menendez.
From 1981 to 2010, she presented an annual Oscar-night special that included interviews with nominees and other celebrities. When she announced that the 2010 Oscar special would be her last, she explained that celebrity interviews had become ubiquitous — and that celebrities were not what they used to be.
‘Too often,’ she said, ‘the celebrity is a celebrity because he or she just came out of rehab; otherwise they are not interesting. I didn’t want to do that.’
She did, however, continue her annual ‘10 Most Fascinating People’ specials, which began in 1993. In the final special, in 2015, Caitlyn Jenner topped the list, but she declined to be interviewed; Ms. Jenner was already negotiating an interview with Diane Sawyer, Ms. Walters’s longtime professional rival.
In her heyday, few turned down the chance to be interviewed by Ms. Walters, but there were others who got away. Ms. Walters said in her autobiography, ‘Audition’ (2008), that her greatest ungotten ‘gets’ were Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whom she knew socially but could never persuade to go on camera, and Diana, Princess of Wales, who, despite all Ms. Walters’s powers of persuasion, instead gave her first interview after her separation from Prince Charles to Martin Bashir of the BBC.
She had other regrets. She told The Toronto Star in 2010 that she was sorry that in 2000 she had pressed the Latin pop star Ricky Martin to say whether he was gay; he evaded the question and did not come out until 10 years later. She said in her autobiography that in retrospect she was also sorry that she had decided not to broadcast the 1976 tape of a White House tour that Betty Ford, the first lady, gave her while visibly drunk.
‘If I were interviewing a first lady today, and she was obviously inebriated, I would certainly air it,’ she wrote. ‘Times have changed.’
‘Having it all’ was not part of the cultural lexicon when Ms. Walters began combining career and family. She and her second husband, the theatrical producer Lee Guber, raised a daughter, Jacqueline, during her time at ‘Today.’ She was married three times in all, and between marriages she dated many prominent and powerful men, among them Senator John Warner of Virginia and the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. In ‘Audition’ she revealed that in 1973 she began a long, secret affair with Senator Edward W. Brooke III of Massachusetts, who was married at the time.
She is survived by her daughter, Jacqueline Danforth.
Many a male colleague groused that Ms. Walters used her femininity and social connections to get ahead, but she had a drive that would almost certainly have propelled her to fame no matter what. She was a perfectionist and a worrier who did her own research, wrote her own questions on index cards and was often her own best editor.
Her ferocity paid off, notably when she obtained the first joint interview with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel as they were negotiating the terms of what would become their historic 1979 peace agreement. Ms. Walters boasted that CBS, desperate to compete, persuaded the two leaders to sit down together again with Cronkite.
One measure of her fame was her ubiquity as a target of parody on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Gilda Radner was the first cast member to impersonate her, as Baba Wawa, in acknowledgment of the difficulty Ms. Walters had pronouncing her R’s and L’s. (The impression did not amuse Ms. Walters.) It was not just the way Ms. Walters spoke that Ms. Radner parodied. She also tapped into the contradictions in Ms. Walters’s on-air persona: her slightly affected enunciation layered on top of a tabloid reporter’s unsqueamish appetite for juicy gossip.
She was later impersonated on the show by Cheri Oteri, Rachel Dratch and Nasim Pedrad. But by 2014, her opinion of her imitators had clearly softened. That May, days before her final appearance on ‘The View,’ she made her ‘S.N.L.’ debut. Appearing on the ‘Weekend Update’ segment, she declared that it had been an honor ‘to see my groundbreaking career in journalism be reduced to a cartoon character with a ridiculous voice.’
The writers of ‘S.N.L.’ were far from her only critics. Many objected to Ms. Walters’s cozy, at times cloying manner with guests, as well as her apparent determination to bring her interviewees to tears. Ms. Walters even made Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of allied forces in the Persian Gulf war, cry when she asked about his father in 1991.
But the ratings were always on her side.
Nightclubs and Cheap Rentals
Ms. Walters said she had inherited both her ambition and her insecurities from her father, Lou Walters, a Boston booking agent and vaudeville impresario who founded the Latin Quarter nightclubs in Boston, New York and Miami and whose fortunes rose and fell, dragging the family from Florida manors and penthouse apartments on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to shabby rentals in Miami.
‘I was old enough to recognize how other families lived, and they were not like mine,’ she wrote.
Barbara Walters was born in Boston to Mr. Walters and Dena (Seletsky) Walters on Sept. 25, 1929. In her memoir she wrote that her father, though ‘not especially good-looking,’ exuded a ‘certain elegance,’ being always ‘impeccably dressed’ and having retained his English accent — ‘very appealing then as now.’ Her mother — ‘quite striking,’ she wrote — had been working in a men’s neckwear store when she met her future husband. The couple — both were children of Jewish immigrants who had fled anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe — remained married for nearly 60 years despite a ‘torturous relationship,’ Ms. Walters wrote.
Barbara attended private schools in New York and public schools in Miami. There were trips to Europe and Broadway openings; there was hobnobbing with celebrities; there were also tax collectors who seized the family car, the furniture and even the dining room chandelier. Her childhood, she said, was shaped by her complicated relationship with her elder sister, Jacqueline, who was mentally disabled. She died in 1985.
When Ms. Walters graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1951 with a degree in English, her father was broke again, and she needed to find a job to support her parents and her sister. ‘I wanted to be normal,’ she once told Newsweek. ‘I wanted to make the marriage and have the children and be one of the popular girls.’
Like many women of her time and education, she started as a secretary, at a public relations firm. That led to a stint in the publicity department of CBS and then a writing job on ‘The Morning Show,’ where Ms. Walters was occasionally brought out of the writers’ room: once in a bathing suit when a model ran late, another time to interview survivors of the wreck of the Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria.
She was hired by ‘Today’ in 1961. At the time, the show had always had an on-camera ‘girl,’ usually an actress or a pageant winner (Ms. Walters called them ‘tea pourers’), and Ms. Walters’s job was to write for them. She was occasionally seen on camera herself — she covered Jacqueline Kennedy’s 1962 trip to India and Pakistan — but she was not a full-time member of the on-air team until 1964, when the actress Maureen O’Sullivan abruptly left. Having a proven, if less glamorous, candidate already on hand, the producers gave Ms. Walters the job, without fanfare.
Ms. Walters would later recall that at first she had an almost paralyzing fear of being fired. But she was bold when it came to finding a way around barriers. She said Frank McGee, who became host of ‘Today’ in 1971, persuaded the network to mandate that he ask the first three questions of any guest in the studio, worried that viewers might assume that he and Ms. Walters were of equal stature. Ms. Walters began staking out famous people she could interview outside the studio, to get around the three-question rule.
After Mr. McGee’s death in 1974, Jim Hartz replaced him as anchor, and Ms. Walters was officially, if belatedly, designated co-anchor.
‘Ahead of the Game’
At her peak, Ms. Walters was extravagantly rewarded — and extensively criticized — for bringing showbiz pizazz to news programs, but networks’ mores followed her lead. She did not change; the industry did.
By the end of her career, Ms. Walters saw herself as a guardian of old-school journalistic values. She complained that for her final ‘20/20’ interview as co-host, in 2004, ABC News chose Mary Kay Letourneau, a schoolteacher who went to jail for having an affair with a student, over President George W. Bush.
Ms. Walters ended her autobiography on a reflective note, saying that in the age of internet news, cellphone videos and blog journalism it would be difficult for any one journalist to have the kind of career she had. ‘If I was, perhaps, atop of the game,’ she wrote, ‘I also had the advantage of being ahead of the game.’
On May 12, 2014, four days before her last day on ‘The View,’ the ABC News building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was renamed the Barbara Walters Building.
‘I’m not going to cry,’ Ms. Walters said at the ceremony. ‘I make other people cry, but I’m not going to cry.’ Read at New York Times
S&P 500 closes out dismal year with worst loss since 2008
By DAMIAN J. TROISE and ALEX VEIGA
“Wall Street capped a quiet day of trading with more losses Friday, as it closed the book on the worst year for the S&P 500 since 2008.
The benchmark index finished with a loss of 19.4% for 2022, or 18.1%, including dividends. It’s just its third annual decline since the financial crisis 14 years ago and a painful reversal for investors after the S&P 500 notched a gain of nearly 27% in 2021. All told, the index lost $8.2 trillion in value, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The Nasdaq composite, with a heavy component of technology stocks, racked up an even bigger loss of 33.1%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, posted an 8.8% loss for 2022.
Stocks struggled all year as inflation put increasing pressure on consumers and raised concerns about economies slipping into recession. Central banks raised interest rates to fight high prices. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes remain a major focus for investors as the central bank walks a thin line between raising rates enough to cool inflation, but not so much that they stall the U.S. economy into a recession.
The Fed’s key lending rate stood at a range of 0% to 0.25% at the beginning of 2022 and will close the year at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% after seven increases. The U.S. central bank forecasts that will reach a range of 5% to 5.25% by the end of 2023. Its forecast doesn’t call for a rate cut before 2024.
Rising interest rates prompted investors to sell the high-priced shares of technology giants such as Apple and Microsoft as well as other companies that flourished as the economy recovered from the pandemic. Amazon and Netflix lost roughly 50% of their market value. Tesla and Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, each dropped more than 60%, their biggest-ever annual declines.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine worsened inflationary pressure earlier in the year by making oil, gas and food commodity prices even more volatile amid existing supply chain issues. Oil closed Friday around $80, about $5 higher than where it started the year. But in between oil jumped above $120, helping energy stocks post the only gain among the 11 sectors in the S&P 500, up 59%.
China spent most of the year imposing strict COVID-19 policies ,which crimped production for raw materials and goods, but is now in the process of removing travel and other restrictions. It’s uncertain at this point what impact China’s reopening will have on the global economy….” Read more at AP News
A suspect is arrested on a first-degree murder warrant in the killings of four University of Idaho students
By Josh Campbell, Jim Sciutto, Lauren del Valle, Mark Morales and John Miller, CNN
“A suspect was arrested Friday in Pennsylvania on an active arrest warrant for murder in the first degree in connection with the killings of four University of Idaho students last month, documents and sources say.
The man arrested is Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, according to the criminal complaint. He was taken into custody Friday in Monroe County, the document states.
A criminal complaint charging Kohberger with four counts of murder in the first degree, as well as felony burglary, was filed Thursday, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said in a news conference Friday afternoon.
Authorities narrowed their focus to Kohberger after tracing his ownership of a white Hyundai Elantra seen in the area of the killings, according to two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation. Kohberger’s DNA has also been matched to genetic material recovered at the off-campus house where the students were stabbed to death, according to the sources.
Authorities learned the suspect had left the area and went to Pennsylvania, the sources said.
An FBI surveillance team from the Philadelphia field office has been tracking him for four days in the area where he was arrested, according to the sources.
While he was being watched, investigators from the Moscow Police Department, the Idaho State Police homicide bureau, and the FBI worked with prosecutors to develop sufficient probable cause to obtain the warrant. Once the arrest warrant was issued, the Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI made the arrest.
Records show Kohberger was arraigned Friday morning in Pennsylvania and he has a court hearing on extradition January 3.” Read at CNN
Key Takeaways From Trump’s Tax Returns
Former President Donald J. Trump, who fought for years to keep his returns private, made no charitable donations in 2020, and his own tax law may have cost him. Here’s a running list of insights.
By Jim Tankersley, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner
“Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have followed through with their vow to make public six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns, giving the American public new insight into his business dealings and drawing threats of retaliation from congressional Republicans.
The release on Friday morning contained thousands of pages of tax documents, including individual returns for Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as business returns for several of the hundreds of companies that make up the real estate mogul’s sprawling business organization.
The committee had this month released top-line details from the returns, which showed that Mr. Trump paid $1.1 million in federal income taxes during the first three years of his presidency, including just $750 in federal income tax in 2017, his first year in office. He paid no tax in 2020 as his income dwindled and his business losses mounted.
The documents contain new details not revealed in those earlier releases. New York Times reporters are combing the pages for key takeaways. Here is a running list.
Trump made no charitable contributions in 2020.
As a presidential candidate in 2015, Mr. Trump said he would not take ‘even one dollar’ of the $400,000 salary that comes with the job. ‘I am totally giving up my salary if I become president,’ he said.
In his first three years in office, Mr. Trump said he donated his salary quarterly. But in 2020, his last full year in office, the documents show that Mr. Trump reported $0 in charitable giving.
Also in 2020, as the pandemic recession swiftly descended, Mr. Trump reported heavy business losses and no federal tax liability.
In the earlier years, White House officials made a point of highlighting which government agencies were receiving the money, starting with the National Park Service in 2017. The tax documents released Friday show that Mr. Trump reported charitable donations totaling nearly $1.9 million in 2017 and just over $500,000 in both 2018 and 2019.
In a bad year for business, Trump didn’t take a full refund.
Mr. Trump reported nearly $16 million in business losses in 2020, which swamped his other income and left him with no federal income tax liability. But the tax documents show that he made nearly $14 million in tax payments to the federal government over the course of the year.
Those payments left him with the potential for a large income tax refund from the government — like the ones many taxpayers find when they go to file their taxes every March. In Mr. Trump’s case, he chose not to take the full refund available to him. He claimed a refund of just under $5.5 million, then directed the Internal Revenue Service to apply another $8 million to his estimated taxes for 2021.
His own tax law may have cost him.
The tax law Mr. Trump signed in late 2017, which took effect the next year, contained some provisions that most likely gave him an advantage at tax time — including the scaling back of the alternative minimum tax on high earners.
But one provision in particular drastically reduced the income tax deductions Mr. Trump could claim in 2018 and beyond: limits that Republicans placed on deductions for state and local taxes paid.
The so-called SALT deduction disproportionately hit higher earners, including Mr. Trump, in high-tax cities and states like New York. In 2019, he reported paying $8.4 million in state and local taxes. Because of the SALT limits included in his tax law, he was able to deduct only $10,000 of those taxes paid on his federal income tax return.
Those losses could have been mitigated at least in part by other sections of the law that were favorable to wealthier taxpayers like Mr. Trump.
Fred Trump is a silent actor in the returns.
Fred Trump, Mr. Trump’s long-deceased father, has continued to have an effect on his son’s finances.
In 2018, after a decade in which the former president declared no taxable income, he reported taxable income of more than $24 million and paid $1 million in federal taxes, nearly the entire total he paid as president.
That income, as previously detailed by The Times, appeared to be the result of more than $14 million in gains from the sale of an investment his father made in the 1970s, a Brooklyn housing complex named Starrett City, which became part of Mr. Trump’s inheritance.
But the new documents show that the effect of his inheritance in 2018 was far greater: Mr. Trump reported $25.7 million in gains from the sale of business properties that he and his siblings inherited or took through trusts, including the sale of Starrett City.
The sales of business properties Mr. Trump created himself came at a loss, however, dragging down his net proceeds and somewhat reducing his tax liability, the tax itemization shows.
That included a total of $1 million in property sold at a loss by 40 Wall Street, his office building in Lower Manhattan, and DJT Holdings LLC. He recorded another $1 million loss bailing his son Donald Trump Jr. out of a failed business to build prefabricated homes.
Mr. Trump also received tens of thousands of dollars in dividends while he was in the White House from trusts that were established for him when he was young, his tax returns show.
A new tax firm got involved in 2020.
For years, Mr. Trump used the accounting firm Mazars USA to prepare his taxes and those of his businesses. Donald Bender, Mr. Trump’s longtime accountant at Mazars, had long been listed on the former president’s taxes as his accountant.
The firm formally cut ties with Mr. Trump and his businesses this year, saying it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization.
But it turns out Mazars and Mr. Trump had begun distancing themselves from each other as early as 2020. That year, BKM Sowan Horan, a Texas-based accounting firm, prepared Mr. Trump’s taxes, his returns show.
Republicans are threatening retaliation.
The release of the documents on Friday set off a new round of attacks between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, including threats of escalating — and politically motivated — future releases of private tax information.
Democrats cast the move as necessary oversight on a president who broke decades of precedent in declining to release his returns.
‘Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud,’ Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia and a Ways and Means Committee member, said in a news release. ‘As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.’
But Republicans — who won control of the House in November — warned Democrats that they had started down a dangerous road, and that public pressure could push the incoming majority to release returns from President Biden’s family or a wide range of other private individuals.
‘Going forward, all future chairs of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target and make public the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders, or even the Supreme Court justices themselves,’ Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement on Friday.
Mr. Trump weighed in late Friday morning with an email statement that also raised the threat of retaliation.
‘The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,’ he said. ‘The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!’” Read at New York Times
A Charity Tied to the Supreme Court Offers Donors Access to the Justices
The Supreme Court Historical Society has raised more than $23 million in the last two decades, much of it from lawyers, corporations and special interests.
By Jo Becker and Julie Tate
“In some years, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. does the honors. In others, it might be Justice Sonia Sotomayor or Justice Clarence Thomas presenting the squared-off hunks of marble affixed with the Supreme Court’s gilded seal.
Hewed from slabs left over from the 1930s construction of the nation’s high court and handed out in its magnificent Great Hall, they are a unique status symbol in a town that craves them. And while the ideological bents of the justices bestowing them might vary, there is one constant: All the recipients have given at least $5,000 to a charity favored by the justices, and, more often than not, the donors have a significant stake in the way the court decides cases.
The charity, the Supreme Court Historical Society, is ostensibly independent of the judicial branch of government, but in reality the two are inextricably intertwined. The charity’s stated mission is straightforward: to preserve the court’s history and educate the public about the court’s importance in American life. But over the years the society has also become a vehicle for those seeking access to nine of the most reclusive and powerful people in the nation. The justices attend the society’s annual black-tie dinner soirees, where they mingle with donors and thank them for their generosity, and serve as M.C.s to more regular society-sponsored lectures or re-enactments of famous cases.
The society has raised more than $23 million over the last two decades. Because of its nonprofit status, it does not have to publicly disclose its donors — and declined when asked to do so. But The New York Times was able to identify the sources behind more than $10.7 million raised since 2003, the first year for which relevant records were available.
At least $6.4 million — or 60 percent — came from corporations, special interest groups, or lawyers and firms that argued cases before the court, according to an analysis of archived historical society newsletters and publicly available records that detail grants given to the society by foundations. Of that, at least $4.7 million came from individuals or entities in years when they had a pending interest in a federal court case on appeal or at the high court, records show.
The donors include corporations like Chevron, which gave while embroiled in a 2021 Supreme Court case involving efforts by cities to hold the oil company accountable for its role in global warming. Veteran Supreme Court litigators gave while representing clients before the court that included Tyson Foods and the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China.
Among the ideologically driven activists from both sides of the political aisle who donated to the society were the benefactors of an anti-abortion group whose leader instructed them to use the society’s annual dinners to meet and befriend conservative justices.
Virtually no one interviewed by The Times, including critics of the society’s fund-raising practices, said they believed that donations to the society had any bearing on cases before the justices. For one thing, many of the donors are already part of the Supreme Court’s insular and clubby world, where former clerks frequently socialize with and argue cases before their former bosses, and where the justices steadfastly refuse to televise their arguments and specifically reserve only a fraction of the court’s 439 seats for members of the public….” Read more at New York Times
Mastermind of Varsity Blues Scandal, Rick Singer, to Be Sentenced
Prosecutors recommended six years in the scheme that undermined college admissions. Mr. Singer asked for a maximum of six months, citing childhood trauma.
“Labeling him the architect and mastermind of a criminal conspiracy that ‘massively corrupted the integrity of the college admissions process,’ federal prosecutors recommended in court documents filed this week that William Rick Singer, the college admissions consultant at the center of Operation Varsity Blues, serve six years in prison.
But lawyers for Mr. Singer asked for a maximum of six months in prison and filed a ‘statement of responsibility and relapse prevention plan’ signed by Mr. Singer. In the document, also filed this week with the U.S. District Court in Boston, Mr. Singer expressed remorse. ‘I have woken up every day feeling shame, remorse and regret,’ he wrote.
Mr. Singer, 62, is scheduled to be sentenced next week in the admissions scandal that ensnared more than 50 parents, exam proctors and coaches in a scheme that used payoffs to secure college acceptance for students with fabricated high school resumes, including enhanced athletic records and SAT scores.
Among those who pleaded guilty were the actors Felicity Huffman, who arranged through Mr. Singer to have her daughter’s SAT score boosted, and Lori Loughlin, whose daughters posed in faked rowing photos in an attempt to secure college admission.
A former college admissions adviser who catered to wealthy parents, Mr. Singer took in more than $25 million from clients and paid $7 million in bribes to coaches of college sports, including rowing, sailing, soccer, tennis and volleyball, federal prosecutors said.
Coaches from colleges including Yale, Stanford, U.S.C., Wake Forest and Georgetown were entangled in the scheme….” Read more at New York Times
Andrew Tate Is Charged With Human Trafficking and Rape in Romania
Mr. Tate, an online personality known for making misogynistic comments, and three others will be held in custody for 30 days, the authorities said.
By McKenna Oxenden and Jenny Gross
“Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer and online personality who frequently made misogynistic comments to his large following on social media sites, has been remanded into custody for 30 days by a judge in Romania after the police charged him and three others with human trafficking, rape and forming an organized criminal group.
Prosecutors with the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism in Romania said in a statement on Thursday that two Britons and two Romanians were being detained for 24 hours as part of the investigation. The statement did not name Mr. Tate, but the police in Romania confirmed on Friday that he and his brother, Tristan, both of whom have dual citizenship in Britain and the United States, were among those detained. The brothers live in Romania, according to Mr. Tate’s website.
Late Friday, a judge in Bucharest ordered all four parties to be held for an additional 30 days. A lawyer for Mr. Tate, Eugen Vidineac, said he was ‘disappointed’ in the outcome and that an appeal had been filed. An appeal’s judge will decide whether Mr. Tate will remain in prison for the entire 30 days, Mr. Vidineac said, adding that a decision could come as soon as Monday.
Ramona Bolla, a spokeswoman for the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism, confirmed the charges. It was unclear whether the other two people were acquaintances of Mr. Tate or his brother.
Prosecutors said that the local authorities had carried out searches of homes they believed were connected to human trafficking and rape. The authorities said they were investigating whether the suspects created a criminal group in 2021 to engage in human trafficking in Romania, the United States and Britain.
Six victims, who were allegedly coerced into performing sexual acts, were housed in buildings outside Bucharest, prosecutors said. On two separate occasions in March, one of the suspects used violence and psychological pressure to rape a victim, prosecutors said.
Mr. Tate, who is in his mid-30s, rose to prominence in 2016 after appearing on the British version of the reality television show ‘Big Brother.’ He has continued to build his online presence, often making hateful comments, including that women who are raped are partly responsible for the attacks.
Mr. Tate drew attention again this week after getting into a spat on Twitter with the 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, bragging about his collection of exotic cars and their ‘enormous emissions’ and asking for her email address. Ms. Thunberg replied with an address ending in ‘@getalife.com.’
Speculation online centered on whether a distinctive pizza box featured in one of Mr. Tate’s tweets to Ms. Thunberg had helped lead the authorities to him, but Ms. Bolla told The New York Times on Friday that that was not the case.
Mr. Tate did not respond to a request for comment, but on Friday morning, he tweeted, ‘The Matrix sent their agents.’
In August, Mr. Tate was barred from Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, with all of them citing violations of their policies. He was also briefly barred from Twitter but was reinstated to the platform, where he has 3.7 million followers, after Elon Musk purchased the company in October.” (New York Times)
Venezuela’s opposition dissolves Guaidó-led 'interim government'
“CARACAS, Venezuela — At the start of 2019, as President Nicolás Maduro was claiming reelection in a vote widely condemned as fraudulent, the head of the country’s legislature stood before an electric crowd of thousands in John Paul II Plaza here in the Venezuelan capital and presented himself as the country’s rightful leader.
‘We will stay on the street,’ Juan Guaidó vowed, ‘until Venezuela is liberated!’
The then-35-year-old head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly was swiftly backed by the Trump administration and governments around the world on the reasoning that he was now the highest-ranking democratically elected official in the country.
A rare unifying figure among the historically fractious opposition, Guaidó said he would serve as the country’s ‘interim president’ until Maduro stepped down — or, at least, agreed to hold free and fair elections.
But nearly four years later and with little to show for the effort, the experiment has come to an end. On Friday, the opposition lawmakers who once rallied behind Guaidó voted 72-29 to dissolve their so-called interim government, effectively ending his mandate….” Read more at Washington Post
Putin, Xi vow closer ties as Russia bombards Ukraine again
By FELIPE DANA
“KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed Friday to deepen their bilateral cooperation against the backdrop of Moscow’s 10-month war in Ukraine, which weathered another night of drone and rocket attacks following a large-scale missile bombardment.
Putin and Xi made no direct mention of Ukraine in their opening remarks by videoconference, which were broadcast publicly, before going into private talks. But they hailed strengthening ties between Moscow and Beijing amid what they called ‘geopolitical tensions’ and a ‘difficult international situation,’ with Putin expressing his wish to extend military collaboration.
‘In the face of increasing geopolitical tensions, the significance of the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership is growing as a stabilizing factor,’ said Putin, whose invasion of a neighboring country has been stymied by fierce Ukrainian resistance and Western military aid….” Read more at AP News
Myanmar’s Ousted Leader Gets 33 Years in Prison, a Likely Life Sentence
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a series of charges since being detained in a coup in early 2021. Her trials came to an end on Friday, capping months of legal proceedings.
By Mike Ives and Matt Stevens
Dec. 29, 2022
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader, was found guilty of corruption on Friday and sentenced to seven years in prison, almost two years after she was first detained by the military in a coup.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, a Nobel laureate, had already begun serving a 26-year prison sentence in connection with more than a dozen charges she has faced since being detained. The additional sentence she received on Friday makes it likely that she will remain behind bars for the rest of her life, unless the junta reduces her sentence to house arrest, overturns its own ruling, or falls from power. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers plan to appeal, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.
Friday’s verdict, delivered in a courtroom that sits inside a prison in the capital, Naypyidaw, was expected to draw international condemnation.
‘The verdicts were unsurprising — this was purely a show trial,’ said Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar for the International Crisis Group. ‘As with the coup itself, the regime’s objective has been to silence Aung San Suu Kyi and remove her from the political landscape.’
There is widespread speculation in Myanmar that the junta wanted to finish Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s trials by the end of the year so that it could focus on another goal: installing Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the military leader behind last year’s coup, as president when the country holds its next general election in mid-2023. A shadow government established by ousted civilian leaders after the February 2021 coup is immensely popular but has been unable to compete politically against the military or to gain international recognition. General Min Aung Hlaing’s military-backed party is almost certain to win the next election.
Myanmar has been racked by violence since the coup. Protests erupted across the country as the junta’s opponents mounted a civil disobedience movement and national strike. The military responded with brutal force, shooting and killing protesters in the streets. Thousands of armed resistance fighters have continued to battle the Tatmadaw, as the army in Myanmar is known, using guerrilla tactics and training in the jungle….” Read more at New York Times
Tesla Stock Fell 65% in 2022, Its Biggest-Ever Annual Decline
Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker has shed more than $700 billion in market valuation in 2022
“Tesla Inc. TSLA 1.12% increase; green up pointing triangle closed the worst year in the stock’s history, having lost more than $700 billion in market valuation amid investor concerns about production disruptions, demand worries and Chief Executive Elon Musk‘s focus on Twitter Inc.
The electric-vehicle maker’s shares fell roughly 65% from the start of the year. A new wave of share sales unfolded in recent weeks after discounts Tesla offered for people to take vehicle deliveries before year-end spurred fears over demand. The company also has had to deal with its China car plant, its largest by volume, temporarily shutting down. Tesla’s stock in December also suffered its worst monthly performance, though shares closed Friday up 1.12% at $123.18.
‘There’s concern that demand will fall just as Tesla’s ramping up their factories, and they’re not going to see the volume growth that the market had been anticipating previously,’ said Seth Goldstein, an equity strategist at Morningstar Research Services.
Wait times that at the start of the year were as high as 30 weeks for some Tesla models in the U.S. have fallen sharply, according to Bernstein Research data.
The share drop marks a sharp reversal for a stock that was cruising at speed little more than a year ago. Tesla’s shares hit an all-time high in November 2021 as the company produced profit, scaled up production and benefited from electric vehicles gaining traction more widely. The stock has plunged 70% since reaching that peak….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Vivienne Westwood, influential fashion maverick, dies at 81
By GREGORY KATZ
“LONDON (AP) — Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday at 81.
Westwood’s eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A cause was not disclosed.
‘Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better,’ the statement said.
Westwood’s fashion career began in the 1970s when her radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm. But she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a string of triumphant runway shows and museum exhibitions.
The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year, her range vast and her work never predictable.
As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion. The young woman who had scorned the British establishment eventually became one of its leading lights, even as she kept her hair dyed that trademark bright shade of orange.
Andrew Bolton, curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, said Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren — her onetime partners — ‘gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past.’
‘The ripped shirts, the safety pins, the provocative slogans,’ Bolton said. ‘She introduced postmodernism. It was so influential from the mid-70s. The punk movement has never dissipated — it’s become part of our fashion vocabulary. It’s mainstream now.’
Westwood’s long career was full of contradictions: She was a lifelong rebel honored several times by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed like a teenager even in her 60s and became an outspoken advocate of fighting climate change, warning of planetary doom.
In her punk days, Westwood’s clothes were often intentionally shocking: T-shirts decorated with drawings of naked boys and ‘bondage pants’ with sadomasochistic overtones were standard fare in her popular London shops. But Westwood was able to transition from punk to haute couture without missing a beat, keeping her career going without stooping to self-caricature.
‘She was always trying to reinvent fashion. Her work is provocative, it’s transgressive. It’s very much rooted in the English tradition of pastiche and irony and satire. She is very proud of her Englishness, and still she sends it up,’ Bolton said.
One of those contentious designs featured a swastika, an inverted image of Jesus Christ on the cross and the word ‘Destroy.’ In an autobiography written with Ian Kelly, she said it was meant as part of a statement against politicians torturing people, citing Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. When asked if she regretted the swastika in a 2009 interview with Time magazine, Westwood said no.
‘I don’t, because we were just saying to the older generation, ‘We don’t accept your values or your taboos, and you’re all fascists,’ she responded.
She approached her work with gusto in her early years, but later seemed to tire of the clamor and buzz. After decades of designing, she sometimes spoke wistfully of moving beyond fashion so she could concentrate on environmental matters and educational projects.
‘Fashion can be so boring,’ she told The Associated Press after unveiling one of her new collections at a 2010 show. ‘I’m trying to find something else to do.’
Her runway shows were always the most chic events, drawing stars from the glittery world of film, music, and television who wanted to bask in Westwood’s reflected glory. But still she spoke out against consumerism and conspicuous consumption, even urging people not to buy her expensive, beautifully made clothes.
‘I just tell people, stop buying clothes,’ she said. ‘Why not protect this gift of life while we have it? I don’t take the attitude that destruction is inevitable. Some of us would like to stop that and help people survive.’
Westwood’s activism extended to supporting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, posing in a giant birdcage in 2020 to try to halt his extradition to the U.S. She even designed the dress Stella Moris wore when she married Assange this past March at a London prison.
Westwood was self-taught, with no formal fashion training. She told Marie Claire magazine that she learned how to make her own clothes as a teenager by following patterns. When she wanted to sell 1950s-style clothes at her first shop, she found old clothes in markets and took them apart to understand the cut and construction.
Westwood was born in the Derbyshire village of Glossop on April 8, 1941. Her family moved to London in 1957 and she attended art school for one term.
She met McLaren in the 1960s while working as a primary school teacher after separating from her first husband, Derek Westwood. She and McLaren opened a small shop in Chelsea in 1971, the tail end of the ‘Swinging London’ era ushered in by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
The shop changed its name and focus several times, operating as ‘SEX’ — Westwood and McLaren were fined in 1975 for an ‘indecent exhibition’ there — and ‘World’s End’ and ‘Seditionaries.’
Among the workers at their shop was Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, who called Westwood ‘a one off, driven, single minded, talented lady’ in a statement to The Associated Press.
He said it was a privilege ‘to have rubbed shoulders with her in the mid ’70s at what was the birth of punk and the worldwide waves it created that still continue to echo and resound today for the disaffected, hipper and wised up around the globe.’
‘Vivienne is gone and the world is already a less interesting place,’ tweeted Chrissie Hynde, the frontwoman of the Pretenders and another former employee.
Westwood moved into a fresh type of designing with her ‘Pirates’ collection, exhibited in her first catwalk show in 1981. That breakthrough is credited with taking Westwood in a more traditional direction, showing her interest in incorporating historical British designs into contemporary clothes.
It was also an important step in an ongoing rapprochement between Westwood and the fashion world. The rebel eventually became one of its most celebrated stars, known for reinterpreting opulent dresses from the past and often finding inspiration in 18th century paintings.
But she still found ways to shock: Her Statue of Liberty corset in 1987 is remembered as the start of ‘underwear as outerwear’ trend.
She eventually branched out into a range of business activities, including an alliance with Italian designer Giorgio Armani, and developed her ready-to-wear Red Label line, her more exclusive Gold Label line, a menswear collection and fragrances called Boudoir and Libertine. Westwood shops opened in New York, Hong Kong, Milan and several other major cities.
She was named designer of the year by the British Fashion Council in 1990 and 1991.
Her uneasy relationship with the British establishment is perhaps best exemplified by her 1992 trip to Buckingham Palace to receive an Order of the British Empire medal: She wore no underwear, and posed for photographers in a way that made that abundantly clear.
Apparently the queen was not offended: Westwood was invited back to receive the even more auspicious designation of Dame Commander of the British Empire — the female equivalent of a knighthood — in 2006.
Westwood is survived by her second husband, the Austrian-born designer Andreas Kronthaler who had a fashion line under her brand, and two sons.
The first, fashion photographer Ben Westwood, was her son with Derek Westwood. The second, Joe Corre — her son with McLaren — co-founded the upscale Agent Provocateur lingerie line and once burned what he said was a collection of punk memorabilia worth millions: ‘Punk was never, never meant to be nostalgic,’ he said.” Read at AP News