4 ms·

That’s the thing some people don’t get about non-profits - the employees and owners can certainly profit. An individual is in question here, not whatever entity

That’s the thing some people don’t get about non-profits - the employees and owners can certainly profit. An individual is in question here, not whatever entity he formed or was working for. Also, non-profit just refers to the structure of the corporation for tax purposes. It’s also not a synonym for charity.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
The notion of "personal profit" raised by the OP in relation to this is problematic - people just get paid by one group or another, it's just income. Why even bother with the 'personal profit' point? A guy worked for a private entity for years. That's it. There's no story here. Nobody working for the Gov. not even AG is going to be required to list all of those who paid into such entities over the past - and it only demonstrates the sad level of partisanship here that everyone should try to consider as much for this guy. If there are some nefarious dealings then, fine, hopefully they will come to light. Other than that, there is nothing here, not even smoke
- code_duck 8y ago
  That’s not quite accurate as far as how employment or compensation can be used to influence public figures. The amount seems rather high, and they would have to be demonstrate that he performed work for which that is something near fair market compensation. Did he have other jobs at the time, for instance? Did they hire any relatives of his? Plenty of questions to investigate as sometimes people are given entirely fake jobs as a method of bribery.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Your questions are reasonable, but in reality, there's nothing remotely suspicious about this. People get paid a lot in high powered situations. Fundraisers for charities make a fortune. Members of Boards get paid a fortune for seemingly not doing a lot. Tons of people in 'think tanks' are paid a fortune for their roles. There's really not much out of line here. If he was receiving money while on the public dole - that's another story. If he 'all of a sudden' got a pile of cash whilst we knew he was going to be AG - different story. But his involvement in the non-profit predates any of the Trumpian shenanigans, so this is really a non story. If you apply the same degree of scrutiny to non-Trump officials from other eras, you run into the same problems. Most massively: the Clinton Global Wealth Initiative. Basically a super-massive kitty-fund for the Clinton family, that actors - many of them nefarious - from all sorts of shady places in the world have paid into while Clinton was Secretary of State ! Her fund was literally receiving millions of dollars from state actors she was doing public business with. There was an example of a man in Chicago who made a $200K donation, and then was appointed to a board (after a scandal he was withdrawn) ... but there's basically no way to detangle Clinton from that fund, no matter how above board she is. Nobody in government should be managing a several hundred million dollar fund that their peers are contributing to. I'm not hinting that she was corrupt, rather, the conflict of interest is as big as you can get and there wasn't much fuss over it.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      Now that you’ve mentioned Hillary Clinton, I refuse to participate in this conversation.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

The notion of "personal profit" raised by the OP in relation to this is problematic - people just get paid by one group or another, it's just income. Why even bother with the 'personal profit' point? A guy worked for a private entity for years. That's it. There's no story here. Nobody working for the Gov. not even AG is going to be required to list all of those who paid into such entities over the past - and it only demonstrates the sad level of partisanship here that everyone should try to consider as much for this guy. If there are some nefarious dealings then, fine, hopefully they will come to light. Other than that, there is nothing here, not even smoke

code_duck 8y ago
That’s not quite accurate as far as how employment or compensation can be used to influence public figures. The amount seems rather high, and they would have to be demonstrate that he performed work for which that is something near fair market compensation. Did he have other jobs at the time, for instance? Did they hire any relatives of his? Plenty of questions to investigate as sometimes people are given entirely fake jobs as a method of bribery.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Your questions are reasonable, but in reality, there's nothing remotely suspicious about this. People get paid a lot in high powered situations. Fundraisers for charities make a fortune. Members of Boards get paid a fortune for seemingly not doing a lot. Tons of people in 'think tanks' are paid a fortune for their roles. There's really not much out of line here. If he was receiving money while on the public dole - that's another story. If he 'all of a sudden' got a pile of cash whilst we knew he was going to be AG - different story. But his involvement in the non-profit predates any of the Trumpian shenanigans, so this is really a non story. If you apply the same degree of scrutiny to non-Trump officials from other eras, you run into the same problems. Most massively: the Clinton Global Wealth Initiative. Basically a super-massive kitty-fund for the Clinton family, that actors - many of them nefarious - from all sorts of shady places in the world have paid into while Clinton was Secretary of State ! Her fund was literally receiving millions of dollars from state actors she was doing public business with. There was an example of a man in Chicago who made a $200K donation, and then was appointed to a board (after a scandal he was withdrawn) ... but there's basically no way to detangle Clinton from that fund, no matter how above board she is. Nobody in government should be managing a several hundred million dollar fund that their peers are contributing to. I'm not hinting that she was corrupt, rather, the conflict of interest is as big as you can get and there wasn't much fuss over it.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    Now that you’ve mentioned Hillary Clinton, I refuse to participate in this conversation.