In case you've forgotten, Donald Trump has more than just his four criminal trials to contend with. There's also a continuing civil trial over his sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll, as well as yet another civil case brought by New York's attorney general over years of business fraud by Trump and his two adult sons.
Eagle-eyed readers will note that I failed to say "alleged" business fraud. That's because a judge today issued a summary judgment declaring Trump and his sons so obviously guilty that no trial is required:
The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron is a major victory for Attorney General Letitia James in her lawsuit against Mr. Trump, effectively deciding that no trial was needed to determine that he had fraudulently secured favorable terms on loans and insurance deals.
Ms. James has argued that Mr. Trump inflated the value of his properties by as much as $2.2 billion and is seeking a penalty of about $250 million in a trial scheduled to begin as early as Monday.
....The decision will not dissolve Mr. Trump’s entire company, but it sought to terminate his control over a flagship commercial property at 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and a family estate in Westchester County. Mr. Trump might also lose control over his other New York properties, including Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, though that will likely be fought over in coming months.
There will still be a trial, but only to determine the size of the penalty against Trump. Worst case, he and his entire family could be stripped of control over The Trump Organization.
There's other stuff going on too, including the fact that Trump is suing the judge, but I assume this will be quickly tossed out and the penalty phase of the trial will commence soon. Buckle up.
Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like the order dissolves the NYS entities, no need to wait for the penalty decision.
https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1706777079608651920
Yes, appeals, etc.
You're right! Dissolution is ordered!
Nah. Worst case is Letitia James gets the full $250M in fines she's seeking, and it forces Trump to sell a bunch of his properties on the cheap, reducing his net worth to maybe a hundred million.
i would call that best case
Did you ever read this article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2022/07/29/donald-trumps-great-escape-how-the-former-president-solved-his-debt-crisis/?sh=379733b53970
Apparently Trump has the cash to pay the fine if he had to.
Also,
Everything I heard indicated he was toast financially once his Presidency ended. That just disappeared as a story, basically with no explanation until I read the Forbes article. He really is a slippery little devil.
I think that if I were in Trump's boots I would be getting as liquid as possible and hiding a good chunk of the liquidity in places beyond the reach of American authorities.
That article leaves unexplained why Michael Dell’s company was willing to overpay so much for the Washington hotel. Why?
"Worst case, he and his entire family could be stripped of control over The Trump Organization."
But this is the best case scenario for the country. Pummel Trump and his family and other co-defendants in all of the cases with fact after fact after fact. Convict the whole miserable lot of them. Put them in jail and throw away the key.
"But this is the best case scenario for the country."
Best case is to go after all those who emulated donnie.
That should happen too. We need those extra thousands of IRS investigators. They will pay for themselves in short order.
Talk about hitting him where it hurts! His pocketbook and his pride. Ouch!
I find it insane that these banks didn't perform the basic due diligence to verify the claimed value of these assets are accurate. Obviously for real estate, there's no exact value, but trump was vastly out of line with reasonable market value and what, no one noticed?
Over the past couple decades American banks gradually, one by one, stopped doing business with Trump. For the last few years before he became President the only bank that would deal with him was Deutsche Bank. And then, during his Presidency, they cut him off, too.
So, yeah, people noticed. It took embarrassingly long, but they eventually noticed.
Right but… for regular people, even regular people with 7 digits in the bank, the banks insist on appraisers going to your property and assessing it before they’ll loan you a dime. It appears no bank ever did this for Trump, and just let him claim whatever he wanted as the value for years before quieting dropping him. That’s… very odd, especially since banks do talk to each other through credit agencies. I guarantee you, if you or I were caught inflating the value of our property and somehow managed to sneak it past (pay off) the appraisers, once word did get out, all credit agencies would put us on their shit lists and no banks would deal with us for at least 7 years. (They would also seize our property and/or file massive lawsuits against us and/or get the criminal Justice system involved, eg charges of fraud on our loan docs).
Trump-Russia-'Deutsche Bank....
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/
And even with DB, it wasn't the bank's regular lending units that were doing business with him, but the private banking unit. So it was basically super rich clients willing to loan Trump Org money in return for what must have been some eye-wateringly high interest rates. Until 2021 when interest rates were really low, I'm sure some high net-worth individuals saw it as an opportunity. Whether they were aware (as I'm sure DB was) that Trump routinely lied about the value of his buildings, I don't know. I suspect that some folks at DB were making some *very* nice commissions off the whole thing either way and maybe preferred not to ask too many questions.
It was my understanding that the banks were well aware of the inflated appraisals and knew an actual approximate value and lent Trump money knowing he was lying. It is also my understanding that if that’s true then the transaction isn’t fraud. I have actual experience with such cases regarding real estate transactions during 2006-2008. I was an investigator with the DRE and called banks to inform them that real estate loans they had made were based on fraudulent information provided to them. They actually laughed and told me “that’s why they call them liar loans”. Based on this I was told that we could not charge fraud.
Just spitballing here, but from what I've read, his lawyers weren't planning to argue this, possibly because they'd have to show that the banks knew (or maybe "reasonably should have known") the valuations were false. But maybe instead they knew he had the cash flow and simply ignored the valuations instead of doing diligence. In that case, maybe they'd be vulnerable to shareholder suits -- although if the loans performed anyway then maybe not -- but it might be irrelevant to the fraud charge. And again if I'm understanding correctly, even if the banks weren't harmed, the state can still charge fraud in the interests of protecting "the people" generally against fraudulent practices.
Also, there was evidently more to it than bank loans, eg insurance applications. And of course it had been going on for years, and maybe some of the banks that dropped out indeed DID realize the statements were false, in which case they'd be victims of fraud.
Anyway, apparently the judge thought it was open-and-shut. So I guess now we'll see what the appeals courts think.
The way it would work is that bank representatives would be asked if they knew the valuations were false and knowing the truth would they have made the loan.
If they answered that they would have made the loan knowing the truth there is no case for fraud. If they said they would not have made the loan had they known the true value, it would be fraud. That goes for others who did business with him.
I recalled some funny business involving Deutsche Bank and Justice Kennedy’s son so I looked it up and found this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/12/untangling-the-links-between-trump-deutsche-bank-and-justice-kennedys-son/
The WP gave the story of possible shady stuff between Kennedy, his son, and Trump 4 Pinocchio’s but the story does give some insight as to what was happening with the bank and Trump. Also, I think the 4 Pinocchio rating is too high. I personally don’t doubt that there was some funny business going on (see also golack’s link)
Without knowing enough about this case to evaluate its legal frailties, I can say that Trump's record in appeal courts suggests that he has little chance of success.
What is even worse is that the state and federal governments had to have known he was cheating, too, but they chose to just give him occasional slaps on the wrist.
In addition the NY area media also turned a blind eye even though there were well-respected investigative journalists such as the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett who started covering Trump’s corruption back in the 80s and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Cay Johnston who covered Trump’s casino corruption in Atlantic City. There is no way other journalists were not aware of the evidence those reporters had uncovered.
Had the media chosen to shine a spotlight on the deep corruption of the Trump Organization instead of having fun covering him as a colorful playboy law enforcement would have felt pressure to hold him accountable.
There are seven “causes of action” listed in the complaint. Cause of action number 1 requires the state to show that each “act has the capacity or tendency to deceive, or creates an atmosphere conducive to fraud.” The court granted summary judgement to the state on the first cause of action.
To win on the remaining six causes of action, the state needs to show that the defendants misrepresented a “material fact.” There is no summary judgement on these causes of action, so it will be up to the jury to decide whether any of the misrepresations in asset values were “material.”
With regard to your story about the banks, the banks weren't being defrauded, but it certainly looks to me like they were committing fraud. If I interpret you correctly, the banks were asking for financial information from loan applicants that they weren't using to determine whether to make the loans because they assumed the applicants would lie. So why ask for the numbers at all? The obvious answer is that they want to use the loan applications to commit fraud themselves, either to deceive bank regulators, or if the banks sell the loans, to defraud the buyers of the loans.
That explains the rationale behind the the law underlying the first cause of action in the Trump case. If a bank is knowingly sitting on a pile of falsified documents that would be very useful for fraud, that is a problem. Maybe the current CEO is a highly ethical businessman who would never commit fraud. What happens when he bequeaths this trove of documents to his successor, who has a bit more moral flexibility? That, in a nutshell, is why New York law prohibits falsifying business records even if it can't be proved that the current intent is to use them to commit fraud.
(The banks you dealt with, if they were subject to New York law, would have the defense that they didn't produce the false documents themselves, although I suspect they encouraged applicants to inflate their numbers. The defendants in the Trump case have no such defense.)
Can we take the name off the buildings now? I mean, that should increase their value a bit.
Funny innit -- people actually used to pay him to put his name on them, figuring it was a draw for some, ah, status-hungry buyers, and I guess they were right. Then.
I hate to say this but I had a friend, a client, that wanted (needed) to do a re-model on his small.ish restaurant...so he pumped up income, got a very high appraisal...and got caught, charged and went bankrupt and got 3 years Fed Probation with a year in I think.
I didn't do the case...I couldn't, he was a friend and...very obviously guilty in written documents...you remember these cases with painful regret....total helplessness.
You don't care about the wins...but things like this sticks darkly in your consciousness...even if you weren't involved...he was a friend, I have no idea where he is now...losing the friendship is still depressing when I think about it. (a problem of solo practice)
Best Wishes, Traveller
There are not enough people like you.
A lifetime of grifting is finally catching up the TFG. I always thought becoming president would destroy him. Trump couldn't accept all the cheap tricks and legal bullying that worked so well with contractors and customers wouldn't work for a president (or an ex-president) facing ooponents with deep pockets and lawyers better than his.
I thought exactly the same thing 7 years ago, in 2016, that Trump would be smart enough to realize the extra scrutiny applied to presidents would bring him down.
But I hadn’t paid any attention to his TV show and didn’t realize how big his ego was. I thought he was a joke not a menace.
I don’t think Ivanka should’ve been let off the hook. Still a chunk of good news! 😎
LOL at "Trump is suing the judge."
Of course he is.
I predict a bad end for Mr. Trump. The walls are closing in, his mental state is deteriorating along with his prospects, and he really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a hand gun.
It's unfortunate that his father treated him very unfairly. Things could have turned out very differently.
Over on Eschaton the story's being floated that the whole gun story is a con. Empty G approached a gun store for a product endorsement so they made up a Trump Special for him to ooh and aah over. He'll never buy but the rubes will.
Or so the story goes . . .
https://www.glockstore.com/Glock-19-Gen3-9mm-Trump-Edition?quantity=1&custcol9=95
“It's unfortunate that his father treated him very unfairly. Things could have turned out very differently.”
Fck that. No sympathy for psychopaths who exhibited a lifetime of criminality, and managed to avoid justice for those crimes for a half century. Trump had a shtty father? So did tens of millions of other Americans who either grew up to lead decent lives or got prison time for their misdeeds. Fck Trump.
What’s unfortunate is that someone didn’t kick Fred in the balls very hard the day before he got his wife pregnant. If someone invents a Time Machine I volunteer to do the deed.
There is a Daily Beast article
Trump Basically Just Lost the New York Bank Fraud Case Before It Even Started
that is hosted on Yahoo (so no paywall). A good summary.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-basically-just-lost-york-203823076.html
Trump's deposition in this whole thing was something to behold. He basically admits that he completely makes shit up when it comes to what his assets are worth -- but they're definitely, absolutely worth billions -- and the banks knew not to trust any of his numbers, but that was their problem, they loaned him money anyway and Laetitia James could go fuck herself. Oh, and also that he personally stopped Kim Jong Un from launching a nuclear attack that could have killed millions, so what about that, huh?
https://apnews.com/article/trump-deposition-attorney-general-new-york-63f4708b27a52a1e544e3caa6f63fa3b
So if the case is so open and shit easy, whatever happened to the criminal investigation?
Those balls are over in NY DA Alvin Bragg's court and aren't related to the real estate valuation stuff. There, Trump is charged with fraud related to the Stormy Daniels hush money payout and colluding with the publisher of the National Enquirer to "catch-and-kill" stories that would embarrass Trump (again, using Trump Org money whose trail they then tried to conceal, thus, allegedly, committing business fraud).
These cases were always going to be more difficult to prove and I'm not sure where the process stands. It appears Trump's lawyers have successfully gummed things up for now, though.
However, it was Bragg that decided NOT to prosecute Trump for tax fraud, which decision you may recall led to the resignations of a couple of prosecutors in his office who had been working on that case and thought it was a slam dunk.
This couldn't happen to a sweeter, kinder, altruistic family.....
Trump sent out a flaming statement that he didn't even include his most valuable possession, his brand. The idea seems to be that putting his name on a building somehow makes it more valuable. I would challenge that assertion anyway, but the idea of a real estate loan involves the value of the property if it were to be sold, and if the Trump Tower is sold, then it will no longer be the Trump Tower. So the argument about what the brand is worth is not relevant to the valuation. If Trump wants to lease out his name, that is a different matter, and it would appear that he has done this to the extent that he can, and a bunch of Trump labeled brands did not do very well in the marketplace.