March 26, 2024
A man bought a house several years ago for $150,000. Through the years, he had made $23,000 worth of improvements, and the market was good, so when he applied for a loan with the house as collateral, he valued it at $179,000.
The bank, however, valued it at just $171,500. So, he got his loan, and over the years paid it back on time with interest.
That’s the way it works. Lenders do their own evaluations of property offered as collateral. That’s the way it is for individuals, companies, and even billionaires like Donald Trump.
In Trump’s case, the document his business submitted for loans even has a disclaimer telling the lender to ignore his valuation and do their own, which, they would do anyway.
So, Trump got his loans with the lender’s valuation of his property, paid back the loans on time with interest, and even has the lenders saying they want him to continue as a customer.
Despite doing business this way for years, and that there was no victim that experienced losses from Trump, the New York Attorney General charged him under a statute that — believe it or not — does not require intent to commit fraud or anyone to be harmed by the fraud.
John Myers, the retired head of GE Asset Management, had this to say: “These high valuations may not be true but the banks and other sophisticated financial institutions do their own due diligence on valuations and basically could care less what Trump’s valuation was. Plus, the loans were all repaid, so who was the victim?”
And when the case went to court, the judge did not use a jury, but decided the case by himself, and has fined Trump over $354 million in damages, and barred him “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.”
The Attorney General said that with pre-judgment interest, the judgment totals over $450 million, an amount “which will continue to increase every single day” until the judgment is paid.
Trump wants to appeal the ruling, so he must pay the judgement amount, plus interest, which totals more than $500 million. That deadline was yesterday.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization called the ruling “a gross miscarriage of justice. The Trump Organization has never missed any loan payment or been in default on any loan.” This lawsuit is an election stunt to motivate base voters, the spokesperson said.
The Attorney General in this legal matter is Letitia James. She ran for office four years ago on a platform that included finding something, anything, to bring Trump down when he was the Republican president.
Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino noted that what Trump did is commonplace, and it is so common that this case should be laughed out of court.
“It won’t be, of course,” Gasparino wrote. “James may be the most partisan Democratic prosecutor in the country, but New York state courts are packed with like-minded judicial types who also think Trump needs to rot in jail. Even worse, objective evidence abounds of James pushing the boundaries in using her office to advance her political goals.”
The actions of Arthur Engoron, the judge in this case, are also under attack. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, the House GOP conference chair, has filed a judicial ethics complaint against Engoron. Stefanik accuses the judge of weaponizing the legal system against Trump, and called on the judge to recuse himself.
As reported by NBC News, “Engoron has exhibited ‘clear judicial bias’ against Trump, including telling Trump’s attorney that the former president is ‘just a bad guy’ whom New York Attorney General Letitia James ‘should go after,’ Stefanik sent a letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. She said the judge has failed to honor Trump’s due process rights, concerns that she said are exacerbated by the former president’s position as the front-runner for the presidential nomination.”
She wrote that “Engoron had illegally gagged Trump’s protected political speech, violated political giving rules with financial contributions to Democrats as recently as 2018, and ignored a decision on the appropriate statute of limitations in the case. At the start of the trial, Engoron ‘infamously smiled and posed for the cameras,’ she noted,” according to the NBC report.
A term that has come to the fore recently is one that applies to this situation. “Lawfare” is warfare using laws as weapons, and the legal systems and institutions against an opponent, and/or to interfere with an individual's usage of their legal rights.
The term may refer to the use of legal systems and principles against an enemy, such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, wasting their time and money, or winning a public relations victory.
Lawfare in this case was made easier by a stupid law that allows someone to be prosecuted for essentially doing nothing wrong, and harming no one, other than the other political party.
That’s not how things should work in the United States of America, and those that are behind this should be relieved of their positions and disbarred.
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