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Alan Dershowitz, Alvin Bragg, Andrew McCarthy, Arthur Engoron, Donald Trump, election interference, fraud, kangaroo court, Letitia James, Levrentiy Beria, Mar-A-Lago, New York, Stalin
Donald Trump is guilty—of doing business.
Legitimate policing requires a predicate for opening investigations. Almost without exception, charges, civil or criminal, require a victim. It is entirely unethical, as wrong as it is possible to be wrong, to choose someone to investigate—or to simply attack—without cause to believe they have committed a crime, and that cause invariably comes from someone wronged under the law—a victim. Competent police agencies simply don’t have the manpower or the time to do otherwise, to say nothing of the legal and ethical issues.
This is particularly true of financial crimes. How does one obtain someone’s bank records without probable cause? How does one obtain warrants without probable cause–facts and evidence that would convince a reasonable person a crime has been committed and a specific person has committed it?
During my police career if I decided to get someone without cause, without a complaint, without a victim, my supervisors would have immediately stopped me, and if they did not, any competent, honest prosecutor would have done so as would any competent, honest judge. Even if the judicial system so horribly failed, an honest media would have screamed to the high heavens about the communist dictatorship injustice of it all.
All of this would be true, must be true, because when one adopts the tactics of Beryia, Stalin’s secret police chief, the rule of law no longer exists. When the rule of law is dead, so too is our representative republic and the inevitable downward descent into third world barbarism has already begun.
But this is New York City, where Letitia James, the state Attorney General, ran for office on the pledge to “get” Donald Trump. There are innumerable videos of her making that pledge. We begin at National Review with former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, no fan of Donald Trump, but a supporter of the Constitution and the rule of law:
This isn’t a judicial proceeding; it’s a partisan farce.
The Bolshevik bloc of the Democratic Party is having its fantasy prosecution of Donald Trump play out in real life in New York City. There, in state attorney general Letitia James’s civil-fraud case against the former president, the trial will begin today even though Trump was already found guilty and sentenced to corporate death last week by a robed apparat named Arthur Engoron.
What? Yeah, I know. It sounds crazy. But that’s because it is crazy — frighteningly crazy. Let me try to explain.
James picked up the scraps of a case Manhattan prosecutors declined to bring. Even Alvin Bragg, who had little hesitation in bringing a preposterous business-records-falsification indictment against Trump based on a legal hush-money payment that harmed no one, refused to charge a criminal-fraud case based on decades of Trump’s financial records — the holy grail that his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, and congressional Democrats chased for years, making two trips up to the U.S. Supreme Court in the process.
Even Engoron, a d/S/C thug, was forced to immediately dismiss around 80% of the charges because the statute of limitations had run out. James, a political hack/incompetent either didn’t understand what any first-year law student would know, or expected Engoron to ignore the law. In New York City courts, that’s probably a safe expectation, particularly where attacking political opponents is concerned. It’s probably only the extraordinarily high profile of this case that forced even Engoron to obey the law.
Oh, and the “Bolshevik bloc of the Democratic Parry” is the Democrat Party. That’s why I’ve taken to referring to it as the “d/S/C” party. The small “d” represents the very few more or less traditional democrats, people who have policy differences but still love and support America and Americans. It is the Socialists/Communists, the Bolsheviks, who are the heart and soul of the party now.
James, an ambitious progressive authoritarian who campaigned for office on a vow to weaponize the Empire State’s legal processes against Trump, decided to package the scraps into a lengthy civil complaint. After all, she had a secret weapon: New York’s Executive Law 63(12), which empowers an abusive prosecutor to put partisan enemies out of business without having to prove anything. Although this provision purports to outlaw ‘repeated’ and ‘persistent’ ‘fraud’ and/or ‘illegality,’ in reality, as I explained last week in a column for The Messenger:
The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them. The state just has to show that a defendant made false claims with enough ‘persistence’ and ‘repetition’ that at least two persons were ‘affected’ — which, whatever it means, is not a synonym for ‘harmed.’
Does that sound crazy, gentle readers? Does it sound unconstitutional? Does it sound like something Beriya and Stalin would have gleefully used to give the appearance of legitimacy to political persecution? That’s because it’s all of the above.
Go here to see legal scholar Alan Dershowitz’s podcast on this topic. Dershowitz, also no Trump fan, is an avowed d/S/C, but he, like McCarthy, understands the necessity of the rule of law and defending and upholding the Constitution. In that podcast he explains why the New York law is unconstitutional, why it deprives its victims of due process. How could such a law exist? Because New York is, for all intents and purposes, a Stalinist state.
The state has thus used Trump’s financial records to establish that he significantly overstated the value of his assets in statements of financial condition (SFCs) that are customarily required in various business dealings (e.g., loans and insurance contracts). Characteristic of Trump, many of these embellishments are shameless — e.g., the fib that his 11,000 square-foot Trump Tower triplex was actually 30,000 square feet and valued at $327 million (at a time when the record sale of a comparably upscale dwelling in Manhattan was $88 million). Such whoppers are strewn through his SFCs, patently intended to project him as a multi-billionaire who became one of the world’s richest men though unparalleled business savvy (and never you mind the inherited wealth and all those bankruptcies).
In other words, he was doing business. While the 11,000 square feet versus 30,000 square feet issue might seem damning, we don’t know the facts. Was this a knowing misrepresentation, or an argument, a business negotiation, over what constituted the “triplex?” A substantial part of the complaint against Trump alleges his “fraud” got him favorable insurance rates. This is nonsense. The more highly valued a property, the higher the insurance premiums. It would be to his financial advantage to undervalue, not overvalue, estimates.
But this was for political consumption and the burnishing of celebrity. In the league of sophisticated financial actors in which Trump plays, where corporate departments are dedicated to valuation analysis because that’s the bread-and-butter of finance, nobody took this nonsense seriously. Indeed, Trump even included a ‘worthless clause’ in his SFCs which, in so many words, warned that they were apt to be, you know, somewhat less than perfectly accurate. Many of the financial institutions that did business with Trump did so for years, and knew exactly the cat they were dealing with. They made loans and indemnified Trump because they knew, based on their own expertise and experience with him, that he was quite wealthy (even if not as wealthy as he claimed) and that he would pay up.
Which he did, reliably — that’s why even elected-Democrat prosecutors wouldn’t charge him with fraud . . . there being no victims.
The “worthless clause” is prima facie evidence that Trump did not intend to defraud anyone. As McCarthy notes, all of the banks and insurance companies involved were more than happy to do business with Trump, and all benefited, handsomely, from that association. Determining a value for real estate is a constantly shifting negotiation. Assessed value for taxation purposes and actual sale value are two entirely different things. No one took Trump’s assessment for gospel—banks and insurance companies don’t take anyone’s word for that. They have entire departments whose job is making that kind of determination. It’s a matter of give and take, of negotiation, of doing business. They do this so that no one can defraud them. This is the status quo, the normal day-to-day world of New York real estate business. It’s the status quo of that kind of business everywhere.
By stark contrast, Tish James need not show victims or even fraudulent intent. Under the civil law, she need not prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. And as she had good reason to expect she’d get a complacent judge in the New York State ‘judicial’ system, where partisan lawyers, if they prove hacky enough, get to be elected partisan-hack judges in the blue state’s one-party political hegemony. James hit the jack pot with Judge Engoron, a notorious and unabashed partisan Democrat.
How partisan is Engeron? First, he refused to allow cameras in the courtroom, except for one very brief period, where the cameras rushed in to depict a scowling Donald Trump. They also focused on Letitia James, seated behind Trump, and giving him the stink eye:
This is the show trial about which McCarthy speaks. It reached its inevitable pinnacle when the camera turned to Engoron:
Engoron immediately began smirking, and quickly pulled off his glasses, apparently so the camera could get his “good” side…
…and began mugging for the camera. Engoron was giving the d/S/C media their money shots, but denying the public transparency.
Engoron, in his pre-verdict, proclaimed Mar-A-Lago worth a mere $18 million. Real Estate professionals estimate it’s worth from one to $1.5 billion. Empty lots in that neighborhood–mere undeveloped dirt–go for $250 million.
There is also video of Engoron bragging, and smirking, about his delight in overturning jury verdicts. Why? Because he admits he renders decisions based on emotion. Due to the nature of the charges, there is no jury, so James can count on a verdict first—that’s already largely been done—and trial second, which is now being done:
No sooner did he catch the case than Engoron decided James had proved it just by filing it (Trump being, in his insight on her views, “a bad guy”), so he imposed a monitor. In the 35-page diatribe he issued last week, he not only found Trump liable on the main cause of action (the §65(12) claim); for good measure, he fined Trump’s lawyers $7,500 apiece (ostensibly for making frivolous arguments, mainly for declining to pretend that Engoron’s hackdom is actually legal acumen).
Those fines are part of the continuing lawfare against Trump, anyone associated with him and any lawyer daring to defend him. It should go without saying that fining lawyers, or threatening their law licenses, for defending their clients is a death blow to the justice system.
Most significantly, the good judge imposed the corporate death penalty: putting Trump, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization out of business, taking away their state-issued business licenses, calling for the appointment of receivers to oversee the dissolution of Trump’s business entities, and continuing to subject him to monitors.
And now, after all that, the trial begins.
Trial for what? What’s left? Well, in addition to the §65(12), James also brought six causes of action in which civil-fraud claims are based on alleged violations of criminal laws. That is, this is the criminal case that the prosecutors assessed was not strong enough to bring. James has the benefit of a civil burden of proof (preponderance of the evidence) and Engoron, rather than a jury, as the finder of fact. But she will still have to prove such criminal-law elements as fraudulent intent and materiality.
So this isn’t a criminal trial, which would give Trump the right to a jury, it’s a civil trial, but it’s a criminal trial too? So James has to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, except she doesn’t? That’s New York, gentle readers. This is a city that voted overwhelming for Biden, that is overwhelmingly d/S/C. Even with a jury, it’s a virtual certainty Donald Trump could not get a fair trial. The verdict was rendered before the defense set foot in the courtroom.
Final Thoughts: Absolutely this is election interference. Absolutely this is politics rather than justice. Absolutely James is coordinating this with the White House and the DNC. Absolutely this is a kangaroo court, but usually, the predetermined verdict isn’t announced until after the show trial is concluded. And absolutely, they’re after Normal Americans and are using Donald Trump to demonstrate what they’re more than willing to do to those with no millions and no political power.
But won’t this lunacy damage New York’s business community? Won’t businesses, fearing the same thing could be done to them, get the hell out? Yes and no. James and the d/S/C establishment are doing this with a wink and a nod toward fellow d/S/Cs. This is the evil Trump. We won’t do the same to you; you’re part of the family. However, smart businessmen know communists are more than happy to go after anyone, particularly people with money. The wink and nod also say: cross us and we’re coming for you, just like we did for Trump.
There is no doubt Trump is going to be found guilty. He has already been found 99.9% guilty. The rest is only about how huge the fine is going to be. They’re bandying about a fine of a mere $250 million. Unprecedented, surely, but so is this “trial.” In the history of New York, if anyone else has ever been so charged, no one has been able to find that case.
Will the inevitable conviction, and the insane law, be overturned on appeal? Both should, but again, we’re talking about New York courts. This might require a trip to the Supreme Court, which may or may not grant cert, and in any case, all that will take place long after the election, and will cost Trump untold millions. The political damage to his presidential aspirations is incalculable. Should Trump become president again, he can theoretically pardon himself, but only for federal charges. It’s entirely possible this, and the other trials in multiple jurisdictions, could bankrupt Trump and his entire family, which is also the point.
The process, for Donald Trump, his family, everyone associated with him, and America, is the punishment.
Doug said:
Well, Mike.. you stated as your “final thoughts”…
“Final Thoughts: Absolutely this is election interference. Absolutely this is politics rather than justice. Absolutely James is coordinating this with the White House and the DNC. Absolutely this is a kangaroo court, but usually, the predetermined verdict isn’t announced until after the show trial is concluded. And absolutely, they’re after Normal Americans and are using Donald Trump to demonstrate what they’re more than willing to do to those with no millions and no political power.”
To which I submit, YOU absolutely have no idea what you’re talking about regarding all that. BUT… having expressed my worthless commentary…. I’ve owned three businesses in my past and I would have LOVED the bennies Trump got any number of times. I’m not talking the dollar amounts at all.. just the financial consideration for various attempts at business loans in spite of having acceptable financial backup. Banks, in general, are way too conservative for small business loans in spite of all their “community spirit”. If I could have gotten away with embellishing assets to gain some advantage and not have gotten caught, I would have. But the little guys not worth millions, much less alleged billions, are not favored. But I played by the rules and banks were totally worthless. Fortunately I was enterprising enough to find alternative means. I’m a bit shocked that Trump’s asset values were not verified or proven… if indeed they were not. I couldn’t even put my home up as collateral and not have some accessor stop by to see for themselves what I put on the loan app made sense… and was legal. So, sorry, my resentment of the banking industry for that and other gaming reasons I have no sympathy.. and would have had a smirk on my face had Trump actually defaulted on one loan.
As for “oh, poor Trump… it’s all political.. blah, blah”, his supports love him playing the picked on victim and just send him more money. The trial is nothing but an election rally. I much prefer to see him convicted for the other “real” crimes going on… if a jury proves it so.
Mike McDaniel said:
Dear Doug:
You miss the point. Were they doing to you what they’re doing to Trump, I’d be no less critical of their methods and intentions.
As to verify Trump’s estimates, as a businessman you know what I’ve said to be true. Such things are negotiations–business–and banks alway do due diligence and continue with the negotiation. If everyone agrees, they settle on terms and do business, and in this case, no one was defrauded. Everyone benefited and because there were no crimes, there were no victims.
While Trump may ultimately benefit politically from the next year plus of trials in multiple states, they are no political rallys. And in New York City, the AG chose her charges to ensure Trump could not enjoy a trial by jury.
You’d do well to put aside your political blinders and see the damage to the rule of law all of this is doing.
Doug said:
There are many “victimless crimes” on the books. In fact, isn’t speeding or not wearing a seatbelt among them? A driver is in violation for non-compliance… not for having victimized anyone or any thing. Public endangerment is generally the impetus there, although not sure wearing a seatbelt would fall into that category. My whole point is that victimless laws do exist.
As for “it’s all about business negotiations, real estate deals, etc.” as if that were some common “wink & nod” process… perhaps so. Doesn’t necessarily make the process legal. Depends on how the law is written and applied. You want to assign a conspiracy for it all then prove it rather than sit there with the usual hyperbole about “Trump against the world.. for you and me” ridiculousness. Maybe start with the members of the Grand Jury who indicted him in the first place to see how many were paid off non-Trumpers. Or you can simply cite the universal “ham sandwich” deflection. BTW, as I recall, there was considerable wonderment in the legal community at the outset of all this as to why his lawyers didn’t demand a jury trial given that option was available.
I didn’t say all his future trials were going to take the shape of political fund raising rallies… as a measure of “is he really suffering?” I said this one has already taken that shape.
If he feels falsely accused he can readily use the same Constitution the Prosecution is using…. which he is a pro at doing to delay, delay, delay all his cases. It would be interesting if he at least once, made it into a courtroom to actually declare his innocence and try and prove it with real evidence.
Mike McDaniel said:
Dear Doug:
Fraud, however, requires a victim. It’s only New York’s unconstitutional “consumer protection” law that allows this sort of abuse.
OK Doug, I’ll bite. Name anyone else how has been treated as Trump.
No, because this is a civil matter, there is no jury option.
Sorry Doug, but it’s up to the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, never Americans to prove their innocence, unless you’d prefer that sort of “justice” system?
Doug said:
Apparently his jury “option” went unrequested, or unchallenged.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/04/politics/trump-new-york-case-no-jury/index.html
New York’s “unconstitutional” consumer protection law has been determined unconstitutional by whom?
I really don’t give a damn about Trump’s fraud case. He’s got the means to fight it, and to counter sue if he feels unfairly targeted. I also see no issue with Latitia James having said during her election that she wanted to bring Trump down. Hell, Elliot Ness was charged by his bosses to specifically bring down Capone. But simply blathering it doesn’t make it stick without a trial. Funny the similarities… couldn’t get Capone for any capitol offenses but ended up getting him on a tax charge. Trump just might go down, not on any of his capitol charges.. but on a state business fraud charge.
To me it really doesn’t matter. He (and the GOP) are rapidly fading from importance as events move forward anyway. I wish there were someone more than Biden, but.. hey… if I vote for Biden it’s purely because I do not want Trump. Trump is psychotic baggage… and he’s old.
The much bigger question is dealing with Trumpian MAGA Americans.
Mike McDaniel said:
Dear Doug:
So, you think it’s fine for prosecutors to campaign on destroying individual citizens without any predicate for believing they’ve committed crimes. You think prosecutors swearing to dishonor their oaths to fairly and non-politically administer justice is a good thing. You think as long as a defendant can afford to waste millions defending themselves against political charges, that’s compatible with the rule of law.
Thanks for that definition of character.
Doug said:
You’re talking to me about character and at the same time suggesting Trump is being picked on unfairly because of someone else’s ALLEGED (by you) slight of character? Please.
I’d not worry. Given his age and health issues I’m sure nature will make the final ruling soon enough. In the meantime we can sit back and continue to watch the gag orders pile up.
Mike McDaniel said:
Dear Doug:
As I earlier noted, were you being persecuted, I’d be defending you. You’re inability or unwillingness to admit the government’s actions against Trump affect us all is more than sufficient definition of character.
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