DIANNE FEINSTEIN LAWSUIT EXPOSES VAST EMPIRE OF GREED, CORRUPTION AND TAX EVASION SHELL COMPANIES

THE FEINSTEIN’S ARE THE CRONY CRIME FAMILY OF THE DECADE

The lawsuit between the family members (SEE IT HERE, BELOW):

FEINSTEIN august-lawsuit (LINK)

… exposes quite a bit of dirty laundry on the Feinstein empire. Private investigators, on both sides, have leaked even more information as they cull the Bay Area for more signs of corruption in the family. Some of the highlights include:

  • The EXHIBITS part of the document leaks the addresses and size of the massive Feinstein empire and proves how Feinstein never had any connection to, or knowledge of, how normal citizens exist or live their lives. Her catered life was a world of yes-men, butlers and 4 star hotels. Just reading the list of hidden shell companies, corporate facades and false fronts in the EXHBIT section will make your eyes water.
  • Feinstein’s assets in Tesla, Google and other big tech companies are hidden in the legal filings, opening up room for the Blum girls to call “liar” on Feinstein.
  • Feinstein traded government cash to Elon Musk for political payola.
  • Katherine Feinstein used to hang out in the hot tub behind the house at 243 Chenery Street in San Francisco and do weed and wine with her girl friend Janet Rivas Tonnemacher, (Now married to a Sonoma Judge) whose mother ran Feinstein’s office. Katherine tends to get pretty loud in an outdoor hot-tub, when under the influence, and the neighbors recorded her disclosing dirty secrets about her mom.
  • A set of private eye files known as “The Palladino Files” is up for bid to the highest bidder and they promise to expose the whole Pelosi/Feinstein/Newsom payola political kick-back scheme.
  • While one copy of the lawsuit, acquired by The Wall Street Journal, has Feinstein’s medical and financial records redacted, copies acquired by other newspapers do not have those parts of the EXHIBITS redacted.
  • The “Blum Girls” as they are known, seem to think the Feinstein’s are insane oligarchs driven by greed and power addiction. They see it as their civic duty to take her down.
  • Blum’s trip to Mongolia, and what he did there, and to whom, scrutinized in cases.
  • Feinstein contacts with Chinese spies and China ownership’s called into question.
  • Bay area VC: Mart Bailey, said to expose insider manipulations with Feinstein/China deals including Tesla factory and batteries mined with slave labor.
  • Bay Guardian Publisher Bruce Brugman, of San Francisco, called Feinstein one of the most criminally crony-based abusers of our Democracy in the history of America.
  • Read More at http://www.san-francisco-crimes.com
Alex Shultz
Alex Shultz is the politics editor for SFGATE. You can reach him at alex.shultz@sfgate.com
An illustration featuring Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband, Richard Blum

POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP

By DUSTIN GARDINER

SAN FRANCISCO — A beach house in an exclusive neighborhood. A trust fund worth more than most Americans will see in a lifetime. A family so prominent that the increasingly acrimonious legal dispute must be turned over to an out-of-town judge.

The feud over the estate left by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s late husband, Richard Blum, has many of the ingredients of a Netflix thriller — complete with a billion-dollar fortune and the potential for a season-ending cliffhanger over whether she will unleash political chaos by retiring from the Senate. It’s the story that everyone is whispering about given the messy final chapter in the life of a grand dame of California politics.

The family struggle that has emerged in recent weeks raises fresh questions about the 90-year-old senator’s ability to serve. A review of the San Francisco Superior Court file, along with a half-dozen interviews with family friends and associates, suggests Feinstein appears to be almost completely removed from the legal brawl, despite her stature and vast knowledge of government and the law.

“The estate battle is a spectacle that diminishes people’s image and memory of her,” said Jerry Roberts, a journalist who wrote a biography of Feinstein and has closely followed her career for 50 years. “It’s a great sadness.”

The family legal battle mirrors the uncomfortable debate over her future in Washington — with Feinstein herself largely silent about the drama surrounding her.

Feinstein continues to serve in Congress despite questions about her ability to hold office, including memory issues amplified by muddled public comments and concerns about her overall health following a bout of shingles that sidelined her for nearly three months.

The stakes for her party are huge. If she were to step down before her term ends in early 2025, Senate Republicans have said they would prevent another Democrat from taking her place on the Judiciary Committee to block President Joe Biden’s federal court appointments. The Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to change committee assignments.

“I am deeply distressed by Republicans and their lack of humanity,” said former Sen. Barbara Boxer, who retired from the Senate in 2017 and now lives in the Palm Springs area. “They know what they can do to make life easier for her. They won’t do it.”

Court filings suggest that the senator has ceded a limited power of attorney over her personal finances to her daughter, retired judge Katherine Feinstein. She and her husband, investor Rick Mariano, are battling the trustees of Blum’s estate and the late businessman’s three adult daughters from a previous marriage over a fortune that expanded significantly over Feinstein and Blum’s 40-plus years as San Francisco’s top power couple.

The Blum trustees, in a court filing Wednesday, pointedly questioned the authority and appropriateness of Katherine Feinstein acting on her mother’s behalf, writing “it is unclear how Senator Feinstein — a sitting United States Senator — supposedly has the capacity to appoint a trustee, yet seemingly cannot file the petition in her own name.”

“If she wasn’t Dianne Feinstein, who the fuck would be talking about a piece of property in a will dispute,” said John Burton, a famously profanity-spewing former member of Congress and state Senate president who is a friend of the senator. “People are picking on her.”

All told, the court filings paint a picture of a blended family that is estranged over what each sees as the other’s attempt to wrongly claim more of Feinstein and her late husband’s assets.

Feinstein and Blum married in 1980, when she was still San Francisco mayor and more than a decade before she was elected to the Senate in 1992. Both were pillars of the Bay Area elite and independently wealthy — she was born into an affluent family, and Blum was a self-made investment broker.

Blum had three daughters from a prior marriage: Annette Blum, Heidi Blum, and Eileen Blum. Feinstein had one daughter, Katherine, also from a previous marriage.

Katherine Feinstein, a retired San Francisco Superior Court judge, has been at the center of the estate war. She alleges Blum’s trustees were wrongly appointed and are plotting to increase her stepsisters’ ultimate inheritance. She has filed a series of lawsuits accusing the trustees of committing “financial elder abuse” for refusing to pay the senator required annual disbursements or reimburse her medical bills.

The younger Feinstein, 66, did not respond to requests for comment. In past interviews, she has discussed the difficulties she experienced growing up as the daughter of an iconic politician. “Probably as a teenager, I was the most resentful of my mother not being like every other mother,” she told NBC Bay Area in 2014. “As time has gone on, I think we’ve gotten closer and closer,” she said.

Katherine Feinstein appears to have a strained relationship with her stepsisters. The Blum sisters have been publicly silent about the estate dispute and stand to inherit much of their father’s wealth upon the senator’s death, including his share of properties the couple jointly owned. Financial analysts estimate Blum’s net worth exceeded $1 billion.

She also alleges that the trustees have inappropriately paid for gifts to Blum’s daughters or forgiven debts while refusing to pay millions that Feinstein is entitled to from her husband’s estate. Blum’s trust documents state that he granted more than $20 million in loans to his daughters during his lifetime — to be forgiven upon his death. Each sister stands to inherit at least tens of millions more.

The two primary trustees are Michael Klein and Marc Scholvinck, both longtime business partners of the senator’s late husband. Klein was Blum’s lawyer for many years, and Scholvinck was formerly CFO at Blum Capital, his private equity firm. Klein, Scholvinck and Blum’s daughters declined interview requests through their attorney.

In their latest filing, the trustees say the senator has an annual income of about $1 million, including $125,000 she receives quarterly from another Blum trust. They place her net worth at more than $50 million.

The trustees said Feinstein submitted a reimbursement request in early June for $169,055 in medical expenses and requested her marital trust cover the $9,166 monthly salary of her security guard and caretaker. They said they did not make the payments because of Feinstein’s other income, which led them to conclude the payments weren’t necessary under the terms of the trust, according to court documents.

Steven P. Braccini, an attorney for the Blum trustees, fired back at Katherine Feinstein in a recent press statement, saying the case has nothing to do with Feinstein’s day-to-day needs and “everything to do with her daughter’s avarice.” He said the process of sorting out Blum’s estate taxes is complicated and has delayed payouts.

In another statement to reporters, Braccini said the trustees haven’t seen any evidence to prove Katherine Feinstein has power of attorney over her mother, a concern he alludes to in Wednesday’s filing.

The other character central to the dispute has been Mariano, Katherine Feinstein’s husband and a Bay Area real estate investor who once worked for Blum’s firm. He has also been at the center of the disagreement over the beach house, worth an estimated $5.6 million. The home, nestled in an exclusive gated community, overlooks a tidal lagoon and sits a stone’s throw from the Pacific, just north of San Francisco in ultra-wealthy Marin County.

In court documents, the trustees allege Mariano hired a contractor to work on the beach house to prepare it to sell and showed the property to realtors and inspectors “entirely without authorization.”

They also allege that Katherine Feinstein tried to complete deed transfers that would have changed ownership of the beach house and Feinstein’s primary residence, a mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, to “Dianne Feinstein and Rick Mariano, as Co-Trustees” of the senator’s trust. The trustees allege there’s no evidence Mariano is a co-trustee of the senator’s estate.

Katherine Feinstein has said her mother no longer plans to use the beach house and doesn’t want to pay for half of its upkeep. She wants to remove the trustees’ control over the property so it can be sold.

All three lawsuits Katherine Feinstein filed have been referred to a judge in San Luis Obispo County, given the San Francisco bench recused itself from the case. The first hearing is scheduled for Sept. 11.

Katherine Feinstein alleges Sen. Dianne Feinstein is victim of elder abuse in filings but experts say Katherine is abusing the law

‘The trustees have acted ethically and appropriately at all times; the same cannot be said for Katherine Feinstein,’ an attorney for the co-trustees responded

By Alex Shultz
The co-trustees of a trust in the name of Richard Blum — the deceased, wealthy husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein — were accused of elder abuse against Feinstein in a recent court filing submitted by her daughter, Katherine, who has limited power of attorney over the senator.
The filing, submitted Aug. 8, partially confirmed what had previously been reported by other outlets: that Katherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco County Superior Court judge and current San Francisco fire commissioner, has limited power of attorney over her mother, which the senator signed over to her on July 23, 2023. The recent court filing notes that this entitles Katherine to make legal decisions for her mother in certain civil-related matters.

In the Aug. 8 filing, Katherine Feinstein made the striking allegation that Michael Klein, Marc Scholvinck and Verett Mims, who control the disputed trust, are committing financial elder abuse against the 90-year-old senator. California’s elder abuse laws cover all state residents age 65 and older.

In the filing, Katherine alleges that the co-trustees didn’t fund a trust her mother is the sole income beneficiary of and that they have not made “required distributions” to the senator since Blum’s death in 2022. Katherine, Feinstein’s daughter from a previous marriage, also alleges that the co-trustees are purposely slow-rolling payments to the senator because they “intend to benefit Richard Blum’s [biological] daughters, who stand to inherit millions of dollars that should go to Senator Feinstein if the Trustees never make the required distributions to her.”

Among other asks, Katherine wants the court to suspend the co-trustees, “pending a decision on whether to remove them,” a move she said is necessary to “prevent further loss and injury to Senator Feinstein.”

Steven P. Braccini, attorney for Klein and Scholvinck, responded forcefully to Katherine’s allegations Tuesday. “The trustees have acted ethically and appropriately at all times; the same cannot be said for Katherine Feinstein,” he wrote in a statement to SFGATE. “This filing is unconscionable. The trustees have always respected Senator Feinstein and always will. But this has nothing to do with her needs and everything to do with her daughter’s avarice.”

In a separate filing from July, first reported by SFGATE, Katherine accused Klein and Scholvinck of failing to disburse money from a separate trust, despite the senator’s requesting money to pay for substantial medical expenses. (The ailing Feinstein missed months of time from the Senate due to a case of shingles and resulting complications.) At the time, Braccini denied the allegation on behalf of Klein and Scholvinck, writing in a statement to SFGATE that the trustees had “never denied any disbursement to Senator Feinstein, let alone for medical expenses.”

But in the Aug. 8 filing, first reported on by the San Francisco Chronicle, Katherine argued that the co-trustees were using deceptive language when they said they’d never denied disbursements. “The Trustees have failed to respond to any requests for disbursements, which is a de facto denial. The Trustees have engaged in an overarching pattern of inaction related to Senator Feinstein’s beneficial interests, to her detriment,” the filing reads. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Last week’s filing made a similar argument in the allegations of financial elder abuse against the senator, citing various sections of California’s Welfare and Institutions Code and claiming that the co-trustees were withholding distributions “in bad faith.”

This latest filing adds to the long, and increasingly ugly, list of legal battles over Blum’s web of trusts. It continues to be unclear how much the senator herself is directly involved in the court battles, particularly given the many reports that her mental acuity is nowhere near what it once was.

On Aug. 10, in a separate court filing first reported on by SFGATE, attorneys for Klein — a longtime lawyer of Blum’s and co-trustee of various Blum trusts — argued that Katherine Feinstein and her husband, Rick Mariano, have attempted to circumvent Klein and prepare Feinstein’s Stinson Beach home for sale without adequate legal authority. In the filing, Klein’s team also insinuated that the senator may not be as closely involved in the decision to sell the Stinson Beach property as her daughter has claimed.

“While [Katherine] claims that she is simply trying to carry out what Senator Feinstein has allegedly expressed to [Katherine], the co-trustees’ fiduciary responsibilities require more,” attorneys for Klein wrote. (Twice in the filing, Klein’s attorneys used the word “purportedly” to describe the senator’s wishes.)

A near-supermajority of California voters want Feinstein to resign from office, according to a June poll.

READ THE REPORTS:

Luxury San Francisco department store Gump’s says it could be forced to close its doors after 166 years due to dwindling foot traffic and homeless people harassing shoppers

John Chachas, the owner of the longtime luxury furnisher, aired the warning by taking out a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle to decry the current state of the neighborhood.

  10. Bruce B. Brugmann was editor and publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a weekly alternative newspaper published in San Francisco.[1] He co-founded the newspaper with his wife, Jean Dibble, in 1966.[1]

    Brugmann was born in Rock Rapids, Iowa.[1] He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska, where he was editor of the college newspaper, and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Brugmann spent two years in the Army as an infantryman and journalist, including a stint in South Korea, where he worked at the Stars and Stripes as a bureau chief. Brugmann spent a year working at the Lincoln Star, three years at the Milwaukee Journal, and three years at the now-defunct Redwood City Tribune.

    Brugmann was one of the founders of the California First Amendment Coalition as well as the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.[1]

    He is known as a passionate advocate for public access to public records. He won a Beacon Award from the California First Amendment Coalition. The Northern California Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists, which he served as president of,[1] gave him a Career Achievement Award. He served as a board member on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, which enforces San Francisco’s public records rules.

    In recent years, Brugmann usually maintained a low public profile in San Francisco. However, during a short lived advertising campaign in the mid-2000s, Brugmann became, literally, the face of the Bay Guardian. Advertisements featured photographs and graphic depictions of Brugmann appeared in print, on signs, and on the advertising panels of SF Muni buses. The text of the ads related to the functions of the Guardian, such as local news, relationships, classifieds. etc., and always concluded with the exhortation, “Read my paper, dammit!” With his features and his words being carried throughout the city on the sides of the buses, Bruce Brugmann was, for a short time, unavoidable. Brugmann campaigned for exposure of Dianne Feinstein’s massive crony payola schemes and political Bay Area payola control of government! He and his associates provided much of the research materials for this, and related, articles on the Feinstein corruption.

The Real Problem With Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Her Age

Jun 10, 2022In recent years, Feinstein’s age and alleged mental impairment have been the subject of much whispering and increasingly public controversy. In December 2020, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker …
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