WEST PALM BEACH — Over the years, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has been called many things by many people as he has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into GOP presidential campaigns.

But, as a Wall Street Journal reporter discovered, there’s one invective he won’t abide: “foul-mouthed.”

Adelson’s attorneys will appear in federal court today in an attempt to block the reporter from questioning a Palm Beach architect about whether one of the richest men in the world has a tendency to use foul language.

Reporter Kate O’Keefe, who is based in the journal’s office in Hong Kong, wants to depose architect Nikita Kukov as part of her defense to a libel lawsuit Adelson filed against her over a 2012 article in which she described the gaming giant as “a scrappy, foul-mouthed billionaire from working-class Dorchester, Mass.”

In the lawsuit now pending before the High Court of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Adelson claims the description of him as “foul-mouthed” is defamatory and untrue. Further, the 81-year-old claims, as founder and chairman of the two largest gaming companies in the world, one of which is based in China, the characterization has caused him considerable business distress.

“Referring to a businessman as ‘foul-mouthed’ is particularly damaging in many overseas markets, such as Hong Kong,” his Miami attorneys Daniel Blonsky and Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney, wrote in court papers. “It is also an egregious falsity.”

To test the veracity of those claims, O’Keefe’s attorneys want to depose those who have worked for Adelson, including Kukov. The Columbia University-educated architect, who has served on Palm Beach’s landmarks and architectural commissions, was hired in 1989 to design a new convention center for Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Hotel. The assignment ended less than a year later when he was fired for allegedly shattering the project’s budget, according to O’Keefe’s attorneys.

Kukov sued for breach of contract and was awarded $1.3 million by a jury. The case was ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount.

“Upon information and belief, during frequent interactions with Adelson, Zukov personally witnessed Adelson use foul and otherwise offensive language,” O’Keefe’s attorneys wrote.

Adelson’s attorneys counter that any statements Kukov would make about Adelson’s choice of words are ancient history. “O’Keefe does not rely on Zukov as a basis for the defamatory statement in her article and, in any event, O’Keefe did not publish to the world that Mr. Adelson is believed to have used foul language in 1989 — a wholly different statement than the insults she hurled at him in her defamatory article,” they wrote. “The Zukov subpoena is simply misguided and ill-intentioned, and it should be quashed.”

O’Keefe’s attorney have showed no signed of backing down. In addition to their suspicions about Zukov’s interactions with Adelson, they say they have discovered other evidence of Adelson’s tendency for profanity. Asked in a 2012 deposition in a Florida lawsuit about what could potentially hurt his reputation, he responded: “Murder, rape dismembering, punching wise-ass attorneys in the face,” he said. “All of that might hurt my reputation. Might.”

 

 

 

The Daily Beast’s initial story on the “rape” allegation included Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, claiming that legally “you cannot rape your spouse.” This is incorrect. According to the Daily Beast, Cohen also threatened the site’s reporters with legal action if they published a story on the accusations.

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?” 

Ivana Trump once accused the real-estate tycoon of ‘rape,’ although she later clarified: not in the ‘criminal sense.’

Donald Trump introduced his presidential campaign to the world with a slur against Mexican immigrants, accusing them of being “rapists” and bringing crime into the country.

“I mean somebody’s doing it!… Who’s doing the raping?” Donald Trump said, when asked to defend his characterization.

It was an unfortunate turn of phrase for Trump—in more ways than one. Not only does the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination have a history of controversial remarks about sexual assault, but as it turns out, his ex-wife Ivana Trump once used “rape” to describe an incident between them in 1989. She later said she felt “violated” by the experience.

Michael Cohen, special counsel at The Trump Organization, defended his boss, saying, “You’re talking about the frontrunner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”

“It is true,” Cohen added. “You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law.”

Ivana Trump’s assertion of “rape” came in a deposition—part of the early ’90s divorce case between the Trumps, and revealed in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump.

The book, by former Texas Monthly and Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III, described a harrowing scene. After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.

“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.

What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.

“Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt writes. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”

Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there “crying for the rest of night.” When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.

“You’re talking about the front-runner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”

“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’” Hurt writes.

Donald Trump has previously denied the allegation. In the book, he denies having had the scalp reduction surgery.

“It’s obviously false,” Donald Trump said of the accusation in 1993, according to Newsday. “It’s incorrect and done by a guy without much talent… He is a guy that is an unattractive guy who is a vindictive and jealous person.”

Cohen acknowledged Monday that he has not read the entire deposition but said he had read the two relevant pages of it, including the rape accusation.

“It’s not the word that you’re trying to make it into,” Cohen told The Daily Beast, saying Ivana Trump was talking about how “she felt raped emotionally… She was not referring to it [as] a criminal matter, and not in its literal sense, though there’s many literal senses to the word.”

Cohen added that there is no such thing, legally, as a man raping his wife. “You cannot rape your spouse,” he said. “There’s very clear case law.”

That is not true. In New York, there used to be a so-called marital rape exemption to the law. It was struck down in 1984.

Trump’s lawyer then changed tactics, lobbing insults and threatening a lawsuit if a story was published.

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.

When Lost Tycoon was about to be printed, Donald Trump and his lawyers provided a statement from Ivana, which was posted on the first page of the book. In it, Ivana confirms that she had “felt violated” and that she had stated that her husband had raped her during a divorce deposition. But Ivana sought to soften her earlier statement.

“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the Ivana Trump statement said. “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

The statement, according to a “Notice to the Reader” in the book, “does not contradict or invalidate any information contained in this book.”

Nevertheless, Cohen, Trump’s attorney, said that “there is nothing reasonable about you wanting to write a story about somebody’s usage of the word ‘rape,’ when she’s talking [about how] she didn’t feel emotionally satisfied.”

“Though there’s many literal senses to the word, if you distort it, and you put Mr. Trump’s name there onto it, rest assured, you will suffer the consequences. So you do whatever you want. You want to ruin your life at the age of 20? You do that, and I’ll be happy to serve it right up to you,” he added.

 “I think you should go ahead and you should write the story that you plan on writing. I think you should do it. Because I think you’re an idiot. And I think your paper’s a joke, and it’s going to be my absolute pleasure to serve you with a $500 million lawsuit, like I told [you] I did it to Univision,” Cohen continued.

The 1990 divorce case between the two Trumps was granted on the grounds of Donald’s “cruel and inhuman treatment” of Ivana. The settlement, under which the Trumps agreed on the division of assets, was finalized in 1991. Her divorce involved a gag order that keeps her from talking about her marriage to Donald Trump without his permission.

Divorce records in New York state are not open to public inspection. But some of the legal documents surrounding the contract dispute over the Trumps’ prenuptial agreement are still available and were reviewed by The Daily Beast.

In one such document, Ivana Trump’s lawyers claim that in the three years preceding their divorce Donald Trump, “has increasingly verbally abused and demeaned [her] so as to obtain her submission to his wishes and desires” as well as “humiliated and verbally assaulted” her. The New York County Clerk’s records office couldn’t locate at least one box of documents relating to the contract dispute. (It’s not uncommon for court files to go missing.)

Ivana Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Donald Trump has a history of grandstanding on rape. His controversial campaign-trail comments this year about Mexicans were hardly the first time he has waded into the hot-button issue of sexual assault.

Two years ago, Trump weighed in on the alarming rate of sexual assault and rape in the military—and in doing so, pinned the blame on the presence of women.

“26,000 unreported sexual [assaults] in the military—only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” he tweeted in 2013. “The Generals and top military brass never wanted a mixer but were forced to do it by very dumb politicians who wanted to be politically [correct]!” he continued.

In 1989, the real estate mogul placed a full-page ad in four New York City newspapers calling for the execution of the five alleged rapists of Trisha Meili, the Central Park jogger who was put in a coma by her assailants. The defendants received different sentences and served between six and 13 years behind bars before new evidence of coerced confessions emerged that led to their convictions being vacated in 2002.

“Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” Trump’s 1989 ad blared. “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”

Trump’s other public statements on rape cases range from tone-deaf to offensive. In 1992, he floated the idea that convicted rapist and boxer Mike Tyson should be allowed to pay “millions and millions” of dollars to rape victims instead of serving jail time. Trump’s modest proposal did not go over well.

“How offensive,” shot back Dollyne Pettingill, spokeswoman for the mayor of Indianapolis, where Tyson committed the assault. “We have a judicial process for these matters and it’s not for sale.”

Whether Trump’s comments about rape—or the accusation of assault from his ex-wife—will hurt his burgeoning political career is an open question. So far, Trump has been able to shake off the sorts of scandals that would destroy any other campaign for president. Dissing Mexican immigrants and prisoner of war has not cost him his campaign, nor has his history of giving to Democratic campaigns. In the latest CNN poll, Trump leads all other candidates in the Republican presidential field, with 18 percent support.

—with additional reporting by Nina Strochlic and Asawin Suebsaeng.

 

by Jim Tanersley 

BOCA RATON, Fla. — On the campaign trail, Jeb Bush has repeatedly emphasized his record overseeing Florida’s boom economy as the state’s governor. He says it’s an example of an economy that created a huge number of jobs and benefited the middle class — an example of what he could do as president. “I know how to do this,” he said in Maitland, Fla., on Monday.

But according to interviews with economists and a review of data, Florida owed a substantial portion of its growth under Bush not to any state policies but to a massive and unsustainable housing bubble — one that ultimately benefited rich investors at the expense of middle-class families.

The bubble, one of the biggest in the nation, drove up home prices and had many short-term benefits for the state, spurring construction, spending and jobs. But the collapse of the housing bubble as Bush left office in 2007, after eight years of service, sent Florida into a recession deeper than that in the rest of the country, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes.

“Who got hammered? Lower- and middle-class America,” said Marshall Sklar, a real estate investor who, like other well-off financiers operating in the state, has benefited from the wreckage.

Sklar recently won an online auction for a small stucco condominium in Boca Raton that a married couple had bought in 2004 for no money down. They borrowed against it as the state’s housing bubble inflated and then, like so many others, had to walk away heavily in debt when it burst.

After buying their busted dream, Sklar flipped it to a wealthy investor, banking a commission. His investor will probably earn a 12 percent return by renting out the condo. The value of the condo was redistributed upward, like so much of Florida’s housing wealth in recent years. “You took it out of the sheep and gave it to the wolves,” Sklar said after touring several houses he recently bought at bargain prices.

The story of this house and its owners is in many ways emblematic of much of the experience of Florida’s economy in the 2000s — a story that contrasts sharply with the record Bush recounts.

“We made Florida number one in job creation and number one in small-business creation,” Bush said in Miami as he announced his bid for the Republican nomination. “One point three million new jobs, 4.4 percent growth, higher family income. . . . That is the record that turned this state around.”

As governor, Bush pursued a classic conservative economic strategy: He cut taxes and sought to limit regulations on businesses. In his 1999 inaugural address, Bush lamented “the crushing weight of taxes, regulations and mandates on Florida’s families and entrepreneurs.”

Bush signed billions of dollars’ worth of state tax cuts into law, including temporary sales tax holidays and reductions in corporate taxes.

His largest cuts were for taxes on investments. Critics said those cuts largely benefited the wealthy; supporters said they helped unleash more economic activity, which boosted poor and middle-class workers.

Bush also contracted out some state services to private companies, reduced the size of the state workforce, pushed limits on legal liability and curbed regulations on private industry. He attempted to diversify the state’s economy by spending $500 million to lure a biotechnology research facility.

Bush campaign officials say it is fair for the former governor to take credit for Florida’s growth under his watch but not blame for the downturn that followed. Under Bush, the Florida economy grew more than a percentage point faster, per year, than the nation’s.

“His overall economic record is impressive,” Kristy Campbell, a Bush spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The governor’s policies, including tax cuts, education reform and junk lawsuit reform, created a strong environment for job growth, which encouraged nearly three million people to move to Florida during his two terms.”

But economic analysis suggests that much of that superior performance — at least half of the difference between Florida’s growth and the nation’s — was driven not by any policy initiatives but by a rapid increase in housing prices. When those prices fell sharply, the state’s economy crashed.

It is a “huge stretch” for Bush to hold up Florida’s growth as a model for the country, said Stan Veuger, an economist at the ­conservative American Enterprise Institute who is not affiliated with any presidential campaign. “I don’t think you can replicate that growth, from a state with one of the hottest housing markets in the nation, in any sustainable fashion,” he said.

Consumer advocates in Florida say Bush’s administration did little to slow that run-up. Other states, such as Texas, had stricter lending standards for home buyers that minimized their housing bubbles and the damage from the ensuing recession.

In the four years after Bush left office, median income in Florida declined by $5,700 — more than a 10 percent drop and double the percentage drop for the nation as a whole. The typical Florida family’s net worth fell 60 percent in that time, according to the Census Bureau. In a state where so much of the economy revolves around real estate, and where many foreclosures that began years ago are only now winding through the court system, there are 200,000 fewer families who own their homes than there were in 2005.

Many of those families now pay rent to Wall Street firms. Institutional investors have bought up huge inventories of Florida condos and single-family homes, often at foreclosure auctions where they pay less than the assessed value of the properties. They’ve watched the value of those properties rise as the housing market heats up again — and they’ve charged escalating rents to people who no longer own their own homes. Florida metro areas have the largest concentration of investor-owned homes in the country, according to RealtyTrac data.

“This whole thing,” said Thomas Ice, a former corporate lawyer and real estate speculator who now represents hundreds of South Florida homeowners fighting foreclosure, “has been one of the great land grabs — transfers of property to the oligarchs — in the history of the United States.”

Housing prices soar:

Florida’s economy has always revolved heavily around selling the state — to tourists, to retirees, to fellow Floridians — and Bush wasn’t the first governor to have climbed a real estate Matterhorn to economic success.

Housing prices rose 10 percent a year in Florida throughout Bush’s first term. By 2005, near the end of his second, they were increasing by 30 percent, more than twice the national average. Only a few other states were seeing such rapid increases. As Florida’s prices ballooned, so did the typical family’s net worth.

Sklar was a freshman at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton when he bought his first condo, for almost nothing down. The next year he borrowed against its value to buy another condo. By the time he graduated in 2005, he’d bought five or six more. In 2006, he cashed out his portfolio, clearing nearly $1 million in profit.

“You know the saying, when your cabbie gives you stock tips, sell?” he said. “That was happening” — but for house-flipping. “Teachers, police officers, they were buying and selling.”

State construction employment rose by 50 percent during Bush’s tenure, and real estate employment grew by 40 percent — twice as fast as in the nation at large. The boom helped attract the largest wave of new residents in state history, and rising home prices drove Florida consumers to spend a lot more money because they felt wealthier.

Economists at the real estate Web site Zillow analyzed the increase in housing value in the state from 1998 to 2006 and calculated, based on a conservative reading of economic research, that inflating prices explained about half of Florida’s faster-than-the-nation growth through the peak of the housing market.

It is “empirically inescapable” that “housing was a big part of the robust Florida economy at the time,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist.

Housing quit boosting Florida’s economy when price growth slowed to a stop in 2006, Bush’s last full year as governor. The state economy shrunk by an average of 2.4 percent a year from 2007 to 2010, while the nation averaged 0.3 percent growth.

“It just crushed retail,” said Brad O’Connor, director of economic research for the Florida Realtors group. “The uncertainty, and everyone being suddenly worried about being able to pay their mortgage, really affected the economy.”

Profits after the fall

While home prices fell, Sklar earned a real estate agent’s license and opened a brokerage firm. By 2012, he saw that prices were ready to rebound. He started buying properties again, both with his own boom-time windfall and with investment partners and associates in his brokerage. His biggest partner was a friend who had worked at a hedge fund before quitting to invest in Florida housing.

On a sunny weekday, Sklar was lounging in a cramped conference room, in jeans and a lavender polo shirt, talking into a cellphone to an investor and watching text messages scroll on a laptop screen. Time was ticking down on the county foreclosure auction, and Sklar beamed it onto a big screen over the table.

The condo’s former owners owed nearly $164,000 on it. Sklar’s winning bid with his investor was $87,000. The couple, wherever they are, will still be on the hook for the difference. The investor will immediately start drawing rental income.

“It was a good one,” Sklar texted the investor. “Best price in a while.”

Soon after, Sklar slipped into his white Toyota Prius to visit several properties his team is working to flip. It was a tour of housing carnage.

There was a low-slung pink stucco house in an immigrant neighborhood in Boynton Beach, next door to Boca Raton. Its owner was halfway through a $40,000 mortgage when she refinanced and borrowed money to add four bedrooms, a bathroom and a new roof. The money ran dry, the work was never finished, and the bank foreclosed. The woman now rents a one-bedroom apartment from Sklar. He’s finishing the extra rooms and is about to sell the house, for more than $50,000 profit.

There was a tan ranch-style on a street where several police officers live, a blue-collar neighborhood with canals running through it. A comedian had owned this house, laid Brazilian cherry floors throughout and filled it with leather furniture, a pool table and a six-figure ­kitchen remodel. Sklar bought it, post-foreclosure, for less than $200,000, and he expects to clear up to $100,000 profit on the resale.

Sklar’s own house is 3,600 square feet, near a lake but not on it, bought at foreclosure for $400,000 and now worth about $700,000. He also owns a boat, which he takes out spearfishing every Friday. It’s his only real escape from his dream-salvaging business.

2. He’s worth at least $1.35bn

by Anthony Zurcher 

 Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is very wealthy. And now, thanks to his recently released Federal Election Commission (FEC) financial disclosure forms covering the past 18 months, we have some new information about the man and the breadth of his financial domain.

Here are five interesting claims and revelations gleaned from the 92-page document.

Mr Trump’s financial disclosure lists involvement in 515 organisations and entities – and 264 of them start with the word “Trump” while another 54 include his initials.

There’s Trump Drinks Israel (a kosher energy drink firm), Trump Ice (a bottled water company), Trump Carousel (a New York merry-go-round that made him $588,518 last year), Trump Classic Cars, Trump National Golf Club, Trump Vineyard Estates and something called Trump Follies – which does not appear to be connected in any way to his presidential campaign.

The exact value of the Trump empire has long been a topic of speculation. When it submitted its paperwork last week, the Trump campaign boldly asserted in a news release that “as of this date, Mr Trump’s net worth is in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS”.

Bloomberg News suggests the number is around $2.4bn, while Forbes magazine puts it closer to $4bn – still enough to buy plenty of gold escalators. 

According to the FEC report, the total for all Mr Trump’s assets minus his liabilities is $1.35bn (£870m). This is a bit misleading, however, as the FEC asks only for a dollar range to the assets listed, and the top category is “over $50,000,000”.

Twenty-three of Mr Trump’s interests, such as the Trump Tower in New York City and golf courses in Florida, Virginia, California and New Jersey, are listed at this level.

“This report was not designed for a man of Mr Trump’s massive wealth,” Mr Trump’s press release scoffs.

3. His signature is nearly unintelligible

Mr Trump’s signature, appearing on the first page of the report, is a series of jagged lines drawn with what appears to be a Sharpie. It dominates the other signatures on the page, written in an ink that is obviously much richer and more luxurious than that his counterparts.

And what’s that over the “p”? A hat? The tip of a Trump rocket? The imagined spire of some new Trump skyscraper.

4. He owns a lot of stocks and has a lot of debt

In last week’s news release, Mr Trump boasted that he’s not only a savvy businessman, he’s also good at picking stocks.

“Even though stock market purchases are not something that Mr Trump has focused on in the past, and while only a small part of his net worth, 40 of the 45 stocks purchased went up in a relatively short period of time, creating a gain of $27,021,471.”

His portfolio totals at least $70m, and includes a laundry list of blue-chip companies – including at least $500,000 each in Apple, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Caterpillar, AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and ConocoPhillips. He made more than $5m in capital gains from the sale of Bank of America stock during the 18-month reporting period and also made millions from the sale of Boeing and Facebook.

On the other side of the ledger, Mr Trump has at least $265m in debt, including mortgages on Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street and Trump National Doral golf course that fall into the “over $50 million” category.

He pays fixed interest ranging from 4% to 7.125%, while other loans are pegged to market rates (which are currently lower).

5. Donald makes money being Donald

Although most of Mr Trump’s income derives from his real estate and golf ventures, Mr Trump also makes plenty of money just being himself.

He earned $1.75m in speaking fees since May 2014, including three $450,000 speeches for ACN, a marketing company specialising in “home-based business”. That compares favourably with $75,000 rate for Republican Jeb Bush and the up to $325,000 a speech Democrat Hillary Clinton has pulled in.

Mr Trump has written 14 books, but most of them aren’t doing much for his bottom line. But his biggest best-seller, The Art of the Deal, still earned him at least $15,000, and Time to Get Tough – a 2011 political manifesto – made Mr Trump between $50,001 and $100,000.

Mr Trump also brought in $14,222 in salary from starring in the NBC television programme The Apprentice, and his operation of the Miss Universe beauty pageant made him about $3.4m. NBC has since cut ties with Mr Trump on both projects.

All in all, Mr Trump’s income over the last 18 months from all sources amounts to at least $431m.

Perhaps Russ Choma of Mother Jones put it best when he pointed out that Mr Trump made more money selling Serta mattresses – a deal since terminated – than twice the total net worth of fellow Republican presidential hopeful Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

 

 

 

 

 

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, SARAH COHEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Since late last year, presidential hopefuls have been romancing donors, hiring staff and haunting the diners and senior centers of Manchester and Dubuque.

But on paper, most of the candidates spent virtually no money exploring a presidential bid until very recently. According to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission last week, the much-promoted campaign staff they hired had other jobs. And their many, many trips to New Hampshire and Iowa had nothing to do with running for president.

Such accounting — which the campaigns defended as perfectly appropriate but some election lawyers said violated the law — has allowed would-be candidates to spend months testing the presidential waters while saving cash to use later in the primaries.

It also let them tap their most loyal donors for additional funds that will not count against the limits on contributions to their official campaigns. And it has contributed to what some experts described as a kind of campaign Wild West, with candidates and their lawyers testing or crossing legal boundaries stretched thin by the advent of “super PACs” and by Federal Election Commission deadlocks.

 “We’re in uncharted territory,” said Kenneth Gross, a Washington election lawyer and former Federal Election Commission general counsel. “This campaign cycle more than any other, we’ve seen more pre-announcement activity being paid for through essentially unregulated money.”

Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have billed hotel rooms in New Hampshire and consulting fees for Iowa strategists to their re-election campaigns in Texas and Kentucky. Gov. Scott Walker billed fees to a Texas-based fund-raiser, hired in March, to his Wisconsin state campaign, months after he was re-elected governor and years away from a potential 2018 Statehouse bid.

Several candidates, including former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, reported to the Federal Election Commission that they spent almost nothing to explore a presidential bid until a few days before they jumped into the race. Federal law requires declared candidates to retroactively report “exploratory” expenses once they enter the race.

Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, reported hundreds of thousands of dollars of exploratory spending, dating to May last year, on political and legal advice. But he did not report any travel expenses before June, though he traveled extensively during the winter and spring to meet with donors and attend town-hall-style meetings in early primary states.

Mr. Bush and some other White House contenders say those expenses are unrelated to their presidential campaigns and were paid for by other political organizations — typically not subject to the same disclosure rules and contribution limits as presidential candidates. The campaigns argued that any costs paid for by such groups were unrelated to exploring a presidential bid and did not need to be repaid once the candidates announced their bids.

 One such group, Conservative Solutions Project, a nonprofit set up by allies of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, picked up the tab for extensive research of Republican primary voters, the kind of expense that would-be candidates bore in the past.

Other White House contenders have assigned months’ worth of expenses to campaigns for other offices.

Last summer, Mr. Paul hired Steve Grubbs, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and an expert on the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, to assist with his national political efforts.

Mr. Grubbs indicated in an email that he is currently advising Mr. Paul about Iowa, and Mr. Paul’s presidential campaign paid his firm, Victory Enterprises, about $200,000 during the second quarter of 2015.

But during the first quarter of 2015, Mr. Grubbs’s fees — about $15,000 — came out of Mr. Paul’s Senate account. A spokesman for Mr. Paul, Sergio Gor, said those earlier payments were unrelated to the senator’s presidential campaign.

Mr. Cruz is not up for re-election in Texas until 2018. But his Senate campaign committee was billed thousands of dollars in meals, hotels, car services and other travel expenses in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mr. Cruz’s Senate committee also paid $12,903 in April and May to a company controlled by Bryan English, the Iowa campaign director for Mr. Cruz’s presidential bid. Mr. English’s LinkedIn profile states that he began working for Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign in April.

Another payment, billed to his Senate campaign in early March, appears to correspond with Mr. Cruz’s trip to Iowa for the Iowa Agriculture Summit. The gathering is described on its website as “a unique forum for potential and likely presidential candidates from both major parties to discuss issues of vital importance to the Iowa and national economies.”

Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz, said his presidential campaign intended to reimburse his Senate committee for any 2016-related expenses once they had all been identified and calculated. She also said that the dates on Mr. Cruz’s reports did not necessarily reflect the actual dates the expenses were incurred, and that it was “standard practice to use the credit card payment date for all the ultimate vendors.”

“We are well aware of the expenses, as they will be part of a larger reimbursement from the presidential committee to the Senate committee that will be disclosed on our next F.E.C. report,” Ms. Frazier said.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced in April that she would seek the Democratic nomination, was among the more conservative candidates in accounting for her spending. Her campaign reported $278,821 in exploratory expenses, including office rent, staff travel and employee salaries and benefits, which she paid for out of her own pocket.

And unlike other candidates, Mrs. Clinton maintained a low profile before entering the race in April: A tally kept by the National Journal showed only five public trips before April, four of them for paid speeches and none in the early primary states.

Mr. Walker did not enter the campaign until after the period covered by the most recent federal filings. But the committee for his campaign for Wisconsin governor, Friends of Scott Walker, collected $6 million from January to July, according to reports filed with regulators in Wisconsin.

His state committee, bound by Wisconsin law, was entitled to raise far more money per donor than a presidential campaign would be. And during the first six months of his second term, when Mr. Walker made more than 30 out-of-state trips, Friends of Scott Walker spent $5.7 million, more than five times what the committee spent during the equivalent six months of Mr. Walker’s first term.

With any Wisconsin re-election bid at least three years away, Mr. Walker’s committee paid out nearly $500,000 in salaries and benefits. Friends of Scott Walker also spent $114,000 on fund-raising events, 10 times what it spent on fund-raising during the equivalent period during his first term.

His Wisconsin re-election campaign paid for hotels and meals in Iowa and New Hampshire from January to April. The committee has paid $2.5 million to his direct mail fund-raising firm this year, more than Mr. Walker spent with the company during his entire 2014 re-election campaign.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, Kirsten Kukowski, said the Iowa and New Hampshire expenses covered employees who “continued to assist in staffing and fund-raising for the Friends of Scott Walker committee.” The direct mail firm, she said, was raising money only for his campaign for governor.

Mr. Bush’s schedule in the months before he announced his candidacy was packed with the kind of appearances that would-be candidates typically use to explore their chances in a presidential race. He made three trips to New Hampshire, two to Iowa and two to South Carolina from January to May, according to public reports, and held numerous meetings with donors around the country.

But while Mr. Bush’s presidential campaign reported spending more than $300,000 on “testing the waters” activity as far back as May 2014, he reported no travel expenses for himself before June 15, the day of the official announcement.

“He was traveling constantly in what appears to me to be ‘testing the waters’ if not actually campaigning,” said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel to the Campaign Legal Center, which has filed complaints with the Justice Department about Mr. Bush’s early fund-raising and spending.

Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, said the travel expenses were covered by Right to Rise PAC, a political committee of which Mr. Bush was “honorary chairman,” and were not related to his presidential bid. “Governor Bush has attended events as a featured guest for organizations that have a mission and philosophy he shares,” Ms. Campbell said.

Mr. Jindal reported only $21,000 in spending before his official announcement on June 23, mostly on facility rentals shortly before the announcement. Yet before that date, the Louisiana governor took high-profile trips to New Hampshire and Iowa to explore a possible run.

Curt Anderson, the chief strategist for Mr. Jindal’s campaign, said in an interview that those trips were paid for by two other groups, one of them a nonprofit policy organization that Mr. Jindal founded in 2013. The campaign’s own low burn rate, Mr. Anderson suggested, was merely an indication of Mr. Jindal’s thrift.

“We’ll run a very lean operation for some time and get a foothold in the early states,” Mr. Anderson said. “We’re going to want every dollar.”

By JONATHAN MARTIN and MAGGIE HABERMAN 

In the space of a few hours last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush showed how their parties’ two best-funded candidates are grappling with insistent, intensifying demands from activists on the left and the right who are deeply disenchanted with the political establishment.

Before a heavily African-American audience in South Carolina, Mrs. Clinton sought to outflank her Democratic rivals who have struggled with questions of race. “It’s essential that we all stand up and say, loudly and clearly, that, yes, black lives matter,” she said on Thursday. “And we all have a responsibility to face these hard truths about race and justice honestly and directly.”

But Mrs. Clinton offered little in the way of ideas to satisfy activists in search of far-reaching solutions to systemic discrimination.

Later the same day in rural New Hampshire, Mr. Bush sought to strike a balance between his view that Republicans must be inclusive to win and a desire not to give in to what he called

“A Republican will never be elected president of the United States again unless we campaign like this,” he said, spreading his arms wide. It was an implicit rejection of Donald J. Trump’s incendiary remarks about immigrants.

Yet, talking to reporters after the event, Mr. Bush was nearly incredulous that Martin O’Malley, a Democratic contender and former Maryland governor, had apologized for telling demonstrators who interrupted him at Netroots Nation last weekend that “all lives matter.”

“We’re so uptight and politically correct now that you apologize for saying lives matter?” he said, dismissing “black lives matter” as “a slogan.”

The well-organized “Black Lives Matter” movement against discrimination and police brutality, on the one hand, and conservatives uneasy about immigration and assimilation, on the other, reflect sharply different currents of anger in American life. But the demands that each constituency is placing on the leading presidential candidates reflect a growing unwillingness to accept the usual assurances, an expectation of action — and discomfiting strains on the political center.

“There’s tension at the seams of both political coalitions,” said Pat Buchanan, the conservative commentator, who has run Republican and third-party campaigns for president.

On the left, young black activists, furious about discrimination and inequities in criminal justice, say the usual rhetorical nods toward equality, incremental increases in funding for housing or education, and vague promises of change from mainstream political leaders are inadequate. Instead, they are confronting Democrats, imploring them to offer specific solutions for what they see as an urgent crisis.

Tia Oso, the black activist who interrupted Mr. O’Malley’s speech at the progressive Netroots gathering in Phoenix, cited “an emergency.”

“The most important and urgent issue of our day is structural violence and systemic racism that is oppressing and killing black women, men and children,” Ms. Oso wrote on Mic.com.

And Jamilah Nasheed, a Missouri state senator from heavily black northern St. Louis, near the center of protests over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson last year, said the anger was moving “beyond protest.”

“You’re seeing a movement now,” Ms. Nasheed said, describing a “boil-over of anger and hopelessness.”

Mrs. Clinton was praised for a speech on race she delivered days after the massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., last month. But several black leaders questioned whether her early words would translate into calls for substantive changes beyond the debate over policing.

In the eyes of many black liberals, no candidate is addressing race and poverty with the boldness of a Robert F. Kennedy.

On the right, by contrast, blue-collar conservatives have responded to Mr. Trump, who has given voice to their fears about what they see as America’s identity crisis.

“It’s not only illegal immigration, but mass immigration and the changing character and composition of the country that unsettles people,” Mr. Buchanan said.

Mr. Trump’s success so far suggests that the eventual Republican nominee could face difficulties persuading many in the party to adopt a more accommodating tone and policies toward immigrants.

A recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that his support came largely from white voters with high school diplomas, a constituency that was most likely to believe that immigration does not strengthen American society.

While Mr. Bush has continued to advocate a pathway to legal status for those in the country illegally, some of his rivals have mused about a harder line. “The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages,” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said in April. And in an ad aired by his “super PAC” in Iowa, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana took on the matter of assimilation directly, saying that he was “tired of hyphenated Americans” and that immigrants must “adopt our values.”

Should the two parties nominate Mr. Bush and Mrs. Clinton, heirs in the country’s leading political families, it is not difficult to imagine a conservative candidate’s mounting a populist third-party run, much as Mr. Buchanan once did, that taps into anti-trade and anti-immigration fervor on the right.

The enhanced expectations and louder shouting from both ends of the political spectrum are a natural outgrowth of President Obama’s administration, said Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University historian. Ambitious presidents who usher in or oversee periods of sweeping change, he said, often lead to the creation of pressure groups on their own side and a fiercer backlash from the opposition.

The John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson presidencies, Mr. Kazin said, did not just spawn an idealistic generation of Democratic baby boomers. “They created the New Left and black freedom movement, both of which became quite critical of Kennedy, Johnson and the entire political establishment,” he said.

The sense, then and now, is that “their problems are not being addressed, and nobody in either party is truly addressing them,” Mr. Kazin said

But Elon James White, the founder of “This Week in Blackness,” a digital media platform, who also works with Netroots Nation, said that would have to change.

“Folks are going to have to learn,” he said, “that people are not going to sit around anymore and let this ride.”

by Janell Ross 

 Illegal immigration is one of those topics on which almost everyone has an opinion — maybe several opinions. But when it comes to the facts, the number of people with a grasp on them is a lot smaller.

Donald Trump, a contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, said last month that illegal immigrants coming across the U.S.-Mexico border are in large part “rapist and “murderers.” And in San Francisco, the shooting dead of Kathryn Steinle, 31, allegedly caused by man who has been deported multiple times and convicted of a series of very serious crimes, has set off a new wave of concern about immigration and so-called “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco.

It’s a lot. That’s why there is Part II. But we’ve tried to boil it down to the essentials for your next immigration-related debate.

If a person is in the United States illegally, why isn’t he or she arrested and shipped back to his or her home country immediately? 

This is one of those places where the country’s commitment to freedom and liberty get a real road test.

As mentioned above, immigration is often complicated. At least some portion of the people who do enter the country illegally or overstay the terms of their visitor or student visas also have legitimate asylum claims. Asylum is limited to individuals who can provide evidence that they have faced persecution or might be killed if they return to their home country. And U.S. law says that most people caught inside the United States should be given a chance to make those claims in an immigration court. (For more information on asylum seekers.  

Now, layer on top of that more than 445,000 people awaiting immigration hearings. Most of these people cannot make a successful asylum claim but might have some other legal defense such as proof of a U.S. citizen parent or grandparent.

Unauthorized immigrants caught inside the United States — or in some cases at the border — generally get a hearing in one of the nation’s deeply backlogged immigration courts. Wait times now stretch into 2019.

That means that federal immigration authorities also have to make decisions about whom to hold during that wait and whom to release and trust to show up again.

How many people does the United States deport each year?

The data reporting here lags a bit behind and, of course, varies from year to year. But on average, between 2011 and 2013, immigration courts ordered about 414,650 people out in one way or another. Here’s the picture painted in the Department of Homeland Security’s most recent annual immigration data report, for 2013.

What is a “sanctuary city,” anyway?

The policies and practices differ in the estimated 60 sanctuary cities around the country. That list includes major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston. But generally, when someone has been, for instance, arrested for driving without a license and then identified as an illegal immigrant at a jail in a sanctuary city, they must serve jail time for state charges or pay related fines. Then, they are let go.

Most of these cities have identified some set of guidelines or conditions under which federal immigration officials must be alerted before the person’s release. Usually they are connected to what’s on the person’s rap sheet.

But some either don’t have them or don’t follow them. For a deeper look at the role that San Francisco’s sanctuary-city status has played in the immigration debate since the Steinle shooting.

Once an undocumented immigrant has been arrested for committing a crime inside the United States, why do sanctuary cities let them go? 

During the apex of the country’s illegal immigration challenges, before the recession, law enforcement officials in some communities expressed concern about the practice of releasing these inmates after they had served time for state offenses. Some of those communities entered agreements to help federal authorities with immigration enforcement. This went on between 2004 and 2012.

These agreements allowed local jails to house undocumented immigrants after they had served time on state charges and bill the federal government for this service. Sometimes inmates were passed along to jails in other places without any formal notice to family members, then into the immigration court system for an expedited removal hearing. In many cases, people were returned to their home countries in weeks.

That program was widely criticized as a possible revenue stream for some local jails  and a potential violation of international human rights accords. Some people were unable to communicate with embassy officials from their countries of origin or notify family members of their arrests, basically disappearing without explanation. Civil liberties groups called it a vehicle for racial and ethnic profiling.  

One Tennessee sheriff described it as part of his toolkit to “stack these violators like cordwood” In addition, more than one analysis of who was deported and what happened during that process showed that most were people initially arrested for minor traffic violations and who had no criminal record.  

President Obama touted the fact that his administration had deported the largest number of people in U.S. history. Meanwhile, immigrant advocates said all of this deeply damaged already-limited police trust in immigrant communities, making people afraid to call police or provide information. That, these advocates argued, was the real threat to public safety.

This is where sanctuary cities come in.

What happens in other cities?

After a series of changes, new programs and memos from the top that were supposed to assure that more of the nation’s deportation apparatus got aimed at serious and violent criminals, the Department of Homeland Security is now asking communities to participate in a different program, this time called Priority Enforcement.

Priority Enforcement won’t formally begin until later this summer, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. When it does, it will ask local law enforcement agencies to notify federal immigration authorities before the scheduled release of an immigrant targeted for deportation. Those targeted for deportation include people with violent and serious crime convictions. And federal officials told The Post that they did make just such a request to the folks in San Francisco.

Finally, is there any evidence that those who enter the country illegally commit more crime than others?

The Fix looked at this issue this week and found an answer that shouldn’t really be surprising.

Like every population, there are some people who have immigrated to the United States illegally who go on to commit serious and misdemeanor crimes in this country. But immigrants of all kinds are actually less likely to commit crimes than those born inside the United States.

It’s important to note that more than one-quarter of all immigrants currently in the United States are undocumented. So a spike in their crime rate would likely mean the “first generation” line wouldn’t be so low.

1. We hope that helps.

by Jenna Portnoy and Abigail Hauslohner 

ALBEMARLE COUNTY, Va. — On the same day Donald Trump touched down at his namesake winery outside Charlottesville to remind people of his dealmaking chops, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser called his controversial remarks about “rapists” and other criminals crossing the Mexican border into the United States “idiotic.”

Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, appeared with his son Eric to celebrate the grand opening of the Albemarle Estate, a hotel on the property of the 1,300-acre Trump Winery, about 120 miles southwest of Washington.

He told the story of getting a $6.5 million bargain on the winery, which he called the largest on the East Coast. “A lot of people wanted it, and I wanted it, but I didn’t want to pay for it,” he told a crowd of wine enthusiasts.

Trump said he told the story to prove his negotiating mettle.

“That’s what our country should be doing with our deals. We should be making great trade deals with China, with Mexico,” he said.

Back in the District, Bowser (D) said Trump’s project in downtown Washington, where he is converting the Old Post Office Pavilion into a luxury hotel, is important for the city.

“It is going to be a big part of the revitalization of that part of Pennsylvania Avenue. Once we have the FBI building settled, we know that that will be a huge development,” Bowser said Tuesday morning on WTOP’s “Ask the Mayor.”

Weighing in on the immigration controversy, Bowser said she hopes that Trump walks back his comments. “They don’t make sense,” she said. “They don’t even stand to reason.”

The Trump project in the District has attracted small protests since his remarks about immigrants, including calls for him to withdraw from the deal. Two restaurateurs who had leases in the new building have pulled out.

Bowser suggested that she had no ability to thwart the project, saying that the prior administration “negotiated an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with them to say that the feds would actually issue all of the permits that relate to the Trump Hotel.” It is “kind of in the hands of the federal government,” she added, naming the General Services Administration and the National Park Service.

She also said that she hopes Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, “will remain the face of that hotel for that corporation.”

“I’ve had the experience over the last year of really working with Ivanka Trump on what the vision is for that hotel, which is on our grand street, Pennsylvania Avenue,” Bowser said. She said she hasn’t talked to Ivanka Trump since her father’s remarks.

Trump shrugged off news that a second chef – Geoffrey Zakarian – planned to pull out of a deal to open a restaurant; José Andrés was first to announce he was backing out.

“They each left massive deposits, okay, which I like very much. They each are personally guaranteeing the rent, and they did that just to be cool and politically correct,” Trump told reporters, adding: “We’re already dealing with other people – some of the great chefs of the world.”

In response to reports that some of the laborers on the project crossed into the United States illegally, Trump said that workers at his properties are vetted.

 “I think we do better paperwork than almost anybody. . . . Can one out of thousands and thousands of people — or two or three — slip through the crack? I guess it’s possible, but we do very, very good surveillance.”

Not far from the historical homes of Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, Albemarle Estate sits atop a hill on sprawling, manicured grounds dotted with hay bales.

Trump arrived by helicopter Tuesday morning and was driven a short distance to the courtyard of the opulent bed-and-breakfast, replete with statues, gold fixtures and brocade chairs.

Trump’s trademark hyperbole was also on display. He said that he plans to file his personal financial disclosure form Wednesday or Thursday and that “it’s going to be a very amazing number.”

Trump said he wasn’t supposed to be talking about the threat from a Twitter account purporting to belong to Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, but he professed “great respect and love” for the Mexican people. He’ll win the Latino vote, he said, because he can bring jobs back. “Jeb Bush won’t bring anything back except heartache,” he said.

“Univision – I’m suing them for $500 million. I have a very good lawsuit. I have a binding contract, no termination rights, no nothing. Stupidly, they tried to terminate, they’re doing an IPO. . . . I wouldn’t buy their stock if you paid me,” he said.

In response to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s critique of his “tone,” Trump launched a tirade on political correctness and the desire to be “mild, foolish, so nice, so kind.”

“And we’re being beaten by killers all over the world — all over the world killers are beating us,” he said.