It was a pretty damning statement from a judge, that's for sure. I'm just waiting to hear the excuse as to how a famous real estate developer can't tell the difference in an apartment being 10k sq, ft. and 30k sq. ft. This should be good.
New York judge finds Donald Trump liable for fraud
A New York judge found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud and canceled the Trump Organization’s business certification, a shocking ruling that poses an existential threat to the former president’s financial empire as he runs for a second term in the White House.
Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling on Monday is a complete rejection of Trump’s arguments that he didn’t inflate the values of his golf courses, hotels, homes at Mar-a-Lago and Seven Springs on financial statements.
worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” the judge wrote.
“That is a fantasy world, not the real world,” Engoron said.
The ruling came in response to the lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is seeking $250 million in damages, a ban on the Trumps from serving as officers of a business in New York and to stop the company from engaging in business transactions for five years.
RELATED: New York AG’s office alleges Trump inflated his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion in 1 year
A trial is expected to begin next week on the amount of damages owed, and the full breadth of Engoron’s ruling – or how it will play out – remains unclear.
The judge canceled the business certifications of the Trump entities that are defendants in the case, including the Trump Organization – a major blow to the business that has been so synonymous with the former president’s personal brand.
A receiver will be put in place to “manage the dissolution” of the corporate entities. There are two New York properties that are part of the lawsuit, the commercial tower at 40 Wall Street and the Trump family compound at Seven Springs.
Questions remain as to how the receiver would dissolve the properties, if the ruling would impact properties located outside of New York state, including Mar-a-Lago, and if the Trumps could transfer the New York-based assets into a new company located out of state.
“Today, a judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in years of financial fraud,” James, a Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday night. “We look forward to presenting the rest of our case at trial.”
Trump condemned the ruling in a statement, accusing Engoron of “doing the bidding” of James.
“It is a great company that has been slandered and maligned by this politically motivated Witch Hunt. It is very unfair, and I call for help from the highest Courts in New York State, or the Federal System, to intercede. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!” Trump said.
Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise called the ruling “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”
He added: “While the full impact of the decision remains unclear, what is clear is that President Trump and his family will seek all available appellate remedies to rectify this miscarriage of justice.”
Judge calls defendants’ arguments bogus
Among other things, Trump is accused of inflating the value of his triplex apartment at Trump Tower by three times its size, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114 million to $207 million, Engoron wrote.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.
The judge was unsparing in his decision, criticizing the Trumps’ defense arguments.
“Exacerbating defendants’ obstreperous conduct is their continued reliance on bogus arguments, in papers and oral argument,” Engoron wrote.
The state supreme court judge likened the Trumps’ legal defense of his fraudulent financial statements to a Chico Marx line in the comedy “Duck Soup”: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
James has alleged that Trump, three of his children, his companies and his business executives defrauded lenders, insurers and other entities. (An appeals court dismissed Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, as a co-defendant from the case in June.)
In the lawsuit, James claims that Trump reaped a “substantial” financial benefit by putting forward faulty information in his financial statements, including $150 million in the form of favorable interest rates he obtained from the banks that the attorney general said his team misled.
In the order, the judge rejected Trump’s deposition testimony in which the former president said that the financial statements were not fraudulent because they contained disclaimers. Trump said the statements contained a “worthless clause” in them warning lenders and others that they shouldn’t be relied on.
Tuesday, the judge said that “the defendants’ reliance on these ‘worthless’ disclaimers is worthless.”
In a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Eric Trump said: “Today, I lost all faith in the New York legal system. Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge - a coordinated effort with the Attorney General to destroy a man’s life, company and accomplishments. We have run an exceptional company - never missing a loan payment, making banks hundreds of millions of dollars, developing some of the most iconic assets in the world. Yet today, the persecution of our family continues…”
Trial start date in limbo
The ruling means the attorney general’s office won on its first claim and will receive some amount of disgorgement to be determined at trial. The case will still proceed to trial but the attorney general’s office won’t need to prove the financial statements are false as they seek to hold him and his sons liable for insurance fraud and false business records.
The trial’s start date remains in limbo.
Earlier this month, Trump filed a petition with the state appeals court to force Engoron to implement an appeals court decision in June that said certain claims may be moot because they fell outside of the statute of limitations. The appeals court left it up to Engoron to decide.
A judge on the appeals court paused the start of the trial, scheduled for Monday, to allow a larger panel of appellate judges to weigh in. A decision on that issue is expected to come this week.
Now they need to start doing this to all the other shady real estate companies. Honestly, they should probably just start doing it for all companies (and politicians whose organizations effectively act as corporations.) Yes, you lied while making political promises, we're revoking your ability to be a politician.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
Ruling Against Trump Cuts to the Heart of His Identity Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer Wed, September 27, 2023 at 8:20 AM EDT·5 min read 421
Former President Donald Trump delivering remarks at a campaign stop in Summerville, S.C. on Sept. 25, 2023. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) Nearly every aspect of Donald Trump’s life and career has been under scrutiny from the justice system over the past several years, leaving him under criminal indictment in four jurisdictions and being held to account in a civil case for what a jury found to be sexual abuse that he committed decades ago.
But a ruling Tuesday by a New York state judge that Trump had committed fraud by inflating the value of his real estate holdings went to the heart of the identity that made him a national figure and launched his political career.
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By effectively branding him a cheat, the decision in the civil proceeding by Judge Arthur Engoron undermined Trump’s relentlessly promoted narrative of himself as a master of the business world, the persona that he used to enmesh himself in the fabric of popular culture and that eventually gave him the stature and resources to reach the White House.
The ruling was the latest remarkable development to test the resilience of Trump’s appeal as he seeks to win election again despite the weight of evidence against him in cases spanning his years as a New York developer, his 2016 campaign, his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of national security secrets after leaving office.
The federal case accusing him of plotting to retain power despite his defeat at the polls three years ago paints him as a threat to democracy, as does a similar prosecution in Georgia. The classified documents case portrays him as willing to obstruct justice to cover up a reckless disregard for the laws that govern the handling of such documents. A New York prosecution stemming from hush-money payments to a porn actor in the closing stages of the 2016 election sets out evidence of the kind of political skulduggery he professes to want to eradicate from Washington.
So far none of those cases has discernibly hurt Trump’s campaign in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, which polls suggest he is leading by large margins. In fact, polls show the indictments have consolidated his support among Republicans. The prosecutions have helped his fundraising.
Whether the effect of Engoron’s ruling is any different remains to be seen. But his finding imperils both Trump’s public image and his business empire. The former president now faces not only the prospect of having to pay $250 million in damages, but he could also lose properties such as Trump Tower that are inextricably linked to his brand.
Trump’s lawyer in the case, Christopher Kise, called the ruling “outrageous” and said the decision would be appealed. He called it “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”
“The decision seeks to nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property all while acknowledging there is zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm,” Kise said.
Trump, in a lengthy post on his social media site, called the statements in the ruling about fraud “ridiculous and untrue,” and said the decision was a political attack against him in the midst of the presidential campaign.
In all of Trump’s recent legal travails, his typical tactics for self-preservation have largely failed him. When cornered, Trump has traditionally sought to bluster his way out of trouble, falling back on exaggerations or outright lies to escape.
These methods have served him well in the business and political arenas, where there is often little price to pay for bending the truth and where voters tend not to distinguish between gradations of prevarications. Those methods, though, have been much less effective so far in the courts, which operate according to strict standards of veracity and staid and sober rules.
In straightforward terms, Engoron punctured Trump’s bubble of protective falsehoods about the way he conducted his business.
“In defendants’ world,” Engoron wrote, “rent-regulated apartments are the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air.”
“That is a fantasy world,” the judge went on, “not the real world.”
Trump’s other weapon of choice — bullying his adversaries — has not fared much better in the courts. This month, federal prosecutors asked the judge overseeing his federal election interference case to impose a gag order on him, citing his “near daily” social media attacks on people involved in the proceeding and the threats they were generating.
Trump blew past an early warning from the judge in that case, Tanya Chutkan, to be mindful about what he said concerning the witnesses, prosecutors and potential jurors in the case. But if he thought he could simply muscle through the judge’s admonition, prosecutors called his bluff. Now Trump has placed himself on what could be a collision course with the judge that could result in his public statements being curbed in the middle of his presidential campaign.
Trump is being constrained by the very system he often uses to try to stymie opposition: the courts. In the last two years, Trump has filed a blizzard of legal actions against news networks, political critics and even the Pulitzer Prize committee. Several of those cases have been dismissed.
But Engoron’s decision hinted at a trait that has longed defined Trump’s personality and approach to doing business. He has always sought to create his own reality, often getting away with it — up to a point.
In a 2006 lawsuit that Trump filed against journalist Timothy O’Brien, the author of the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald,” which estimated that Trump’s net worth was no greater than $250 million, the future president sat for a deposition and made a surprising statement about how he calculates the value of his holdings.
“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try,” Trump said.
While you may think it's someone "revoking your ability to be a politician", I think what it really amounts to is something far more basic and obvious. I don't think it matters who you are, what your background is, what profession you come from or which party you belong to, when you run for and become the President of The United States, you chose to place yourself under the microscope. You chose to have everyone, every journalist every politician from the opposing party doing what would amount to not much less than a cavity search of your entire background both personal and in terms of your business dealings. People do believe they need to know who that person really is that's running the country and I believe they have a right to know.
So if you have a lot of shady things in your past, if you have done things that are criminal, if you plan to continue to do things that are criminal, you should never consider running for president. Because it is you who made the decision to bring that microscope on yourself and nobody else. I understand that nobody will most likely come out squeaky clean under such a microscope. And sadly that may be one of the biggest reasons we don't have better qualified candidates running for office. I mean who can blame them for not wanting to put themselves and their family under that type of scrutiny?
But when you have a huge bucket of dirty mop water in your past and present as trump does, how anyone can buy into his claim that he's some kind of victim is beyond rational thought.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
No matter the overhead light that one looks at trump with.
What is seen is a deeply flawed person. Someone who would do anything for selfish reasons. I honestly believe that he would never consider doing anything for someone else unless he would somehow benefit.
With all that has been written about him from those who have been close to him. I have never read an incident of kindness unless it was for a photo opportunity.
While you may think it's someone "revoking your ability to be a politician", I think what it really amounts to is something far more basic and obvious. I don't think it matters who you are, what your background is, what profession you come from or which party you belong to, when you run for and become the President of The United States, you chose to place yourself under the microscope. You chose to have everyone, every journalist every politician from the opposing party doing what would amount to not much less than a cavity search of your entire background both personal and in terms of your business dealings. People do believe they need to know who that person really is that's running the country and I believe they have a right to know.
So if you have a lot of shady things in your past, if you have done things that are criminal, if you plan to continue to do things that are criminal, you should never consider running for president. Because it is you who made the decision to bring that microscope on yourself and nobody else. I understand that nobody will most likely come out squeaky clean under such a microscope. And sadly that may be one of the biggest reasons we don't have better qualified candidates running for office. I mean who can blame them for not wanting to put themselves and their family under that type of scrutiny?
But when you have a huge bucket of dirty mop water in your past and present as trump does, how anyone can buy into his claim that he's some kind of victim is beyond rational thought.
I'm not thinking that's what they are doing as if it is a bad thing. I'm saying that's what they should be doing more of.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
I mean, if you go back to when so many folks voted for him, when asked why, they said, well, he's a successful businessman. He can figure it out and he can fix it.
Oh well.
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Mar a lago Palm County assessed its value 12 years ago at 18 million and a couple years ago at 27.6 mil-a nice gain Trump assessed it at 42 million 12 years ago and 612 million a couple years ago and Eric posted on x that they assess it now over 1 billion.
Only people that would spend 1 billion for that are the Saudi’s or the Russians and the boxes would have to be part of the deal
Mar a lago Palm County assessed its value 12 years ago at 18 million and a couple years ago at 27.6 mil-a nice gain Trump assessed it at 42 million 12 years ago and 612 million a couple years ago and Eric posted on x that they assess it now over 1 billion.
Only people that would spend 1 billion for that are the Saudi’s or the Russians and the boxes would have to be part of the deal
Don't confuse tax valuation with sale value. I'd love to be able to buy Mar A Lago for $20 million. But it's worth way more than that on the open market.
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Mar a lago Palm County assessed its value 12 years ago at 18 million and a couple years ago at 27.6 mil-a nice gain Trump assessed it at 42 million 12 years ago and 612 million a couple years ago and Eric posted on x that they assess it now over 1 billion.
Only people that would spend 1 billion for that are the Saudi’s or the Russians and the boxes would have to be part of the deal
Don't confuse tax valuation with sale value. I'd love to be able to buy Mar A Lago for $20 million. But it's worth way more than that on the open market.
This is from Forbes with a little more info on the assessed value, sale value and trump family thoughts on what it is worth
Engoron’s determination that Trump inflated the value of the estate cites an appraisal by the Palm Beach County Assessor, which found the market value of the 17.5-acre property between 2011 and 2021 between $18 million and $27.6 million.
According to a 2023 market appraisal report by the city of Palm Beach, the total value of the property is $37 million, an increase of $6 million from last year and nearly $10 million more than the appraised value Engoron cited in his ruling this week.
Earlier this year, Forbes estimated the property is worth a more generous $325 million, after reviewing its financial history and consulting eight real estate experts.
But Trump and other defendants in a civil fraud case brought by New York’s Attorney General claim the property is worth more than $1.5 billion, according to an affidavit from attorney Lawrence Moens, who called Mar-A-Lago an “exclusive and extensive family compound in the most desirable sections of Palm Beach,” saying he is “confident” he could find a potential buyer “in short order.”
I'm a devoted Trump despiser. I'm very happy the State of New York is going to "possibly" hurt Mr. Trump where he will be hurt the most- taking away his money and prestige in New York. He is going to civil trial next week- as of today/ his delaying tactics are gone. He'll probably use the 5th Amendment over and over again, something he claimed he'd never do, we will see. He better get ready to sell some more action cards to his followers- very Presidential. Can't wait to see what happens. Sorry, but, this isn't Stalinist or Nazism- he's lied for decades on official loan and tax documents- time to pay up. Finally, maybe.
"You've never lived till you've almost died, life has a flavor the protected will never know" A vet or cop
You're correct- yet, as I remember, one of his indictments has to do with abuse of donor money diverted to his legal bills vs. using it to win elections. Hopefully big house future for Mr. Trump.
Last edited by hitt; 09/29/2307:23 PM. Reason: spelling
"You've never lived till you've almost died, life has a flavor the protected will never know" A vet or cop
There is a lot of different valuations. Just looking at property around Mar A Lago, it's clear the sale value is huge. What exactly it is, I got no clue. 20
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
You're correct- yet, as I remember, one of his indictments has to do with abuse of donor money diverted to his legal bills vs. using it to win elections. Hopefully big house future for Mr. Trump.
And yet the dumb mass continues to donate more$
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. – Jackie Robinson
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