Trump court cases

Trump is finally and justifiably paying the consequences for his unethical and illegal business practices

slate.com/business/2022/09/trump-lawsuit-real-estate-appraisal-taxes-seven-springs.html

Property values are difficult to assess absent a sale. Appraisers are notorious for valuing properties in ways that benefit their clients. Practically speaking, there’s some wiggle room. But at some point, valuations can be so high or low that no reasonable person could believe them to be accurate. On Wednesday, James alleged, and seems to have clear proof, that Trump and his organization routinely increased the value of his properties with no basis in fact to gain a variety of benefits, including both the ability to get loans and to get them with very low interest rates. While Trump might argue that the dispute over the values offered simply reflects a difference of opinion or was done without the intent to deceive, the attorney general has also asserted that Trump and his organization misrepresented cold, hard facts, like the square footage of his own apartment.

As I like to tell my law students, there is always a tax angle, and this case is no exception. As detailed in the complaint, some of the strongest evidence that Trump intentionally inflated the value of his properties—and hence his net worth—are found in claims he contemporaneously made for state property tax purposes. Not surprisingly, he gave low valuations to tax authorities, while giving much higher ones to his possible lenders. As the attorney general sees it, either he committed tax fraud by using unreasonably low valuations when dealing with tax authorities, or he committed fraud on his lenders and insurers by using valuations significantly higher than those he reported to the state and federal governments.

And there is some evidence in the complaint that Trump was fully aware of the difficulties of claiming one value for tax purposes and another for financial purposes. For instance, he apparently took the position that Trump Tower in Chicago was worthless, creating a substantial loss that could lower his tax liability. Not wanting to contradict that claim, he excluded the value of that building from his Statements of Financial Condition, which he provided to lenders. He was apparently less careful with his Las Vegas property, tinkering with assumptions and the discount rate to provide one lower valuation to Clark County, and a much higher one to potential investors and bankers.

Tax issues also come into play with his Trump Seven Springs property in Westchester County, New York. He represented that estate was worth almost $300 million, based on the notion that the property could be developed into a number of $23 million estates, despite the fact that he did not have approval from various towns to do that. At the same time, he was working on creating a conservation easement for the land that would preclude the very development he described in his valuation.

A conservation easement binds current and future owners from developing property, which arguably creates a public benefit and reduces the value of the property in question. To compensate taxpayers for creating such easements, Congress permits them to deduct the value of a conservation easement as a charitable donation. As such, this is one of the few times when a higher valuation is good for tax purposes, because it increases the value of the easement created. According to the complaint, contemporaneous valuations done for tax purposes yielded a number much lower than the almost $300 million asserted in financial documents, and even that smaller number overstated the property’s value, leading to an improperly high tax deduction.

Inflating the value of the property for lenders induces them to make loans they might not otherwise have made and to charge less in interest rates, on the theory that they were taking less risk. As it stands, many of those loans are coming due in the next few years, and it is not clear whether or how Trump and his organization will be able to repay them. Meanwhile, understating the value of property for tax purposes allows Trump to pay less in taxes than he otherwise should, leaving the rest of us to make up the difference in the form of higher taxes or reduced government services.

I’m not relying on my opinion. I trust the judge and the prosecutors know what they’re doing. They are more trustworthy and knowledgeable than a guy whose credentials are being on TV. And no one else except this guy and maybe Fox have come out and said the judgement will be a problem for the real estate industry. If the real estate industry truly is at risk from the judgement that knowingly inflating property values on a massive scale is fraudulent, then maybe the real estate industry needs a shake up. The judgement is only a problem for Trump and the Republicans.

I’m not surprised, but the fact that you’re defending Trump over criminal activity is kind of telling. He was found guilty of fraud on a massive scale. At some point, I hope that you and Republicans will do some soul searching and really examine just how far you’re willing to go to defend this guy. Apparently, if there is a line or a bridge too far where you will stop defending Trump, he hasn’t crossed it yet.

He incited an insurrection, tried to overturn the results of an election, threatened to withdraw from NATO, invited Putin to invade Europe, was found guilty of fraud on a massive scale and was found guilty of sexual assault in court. And you continue to defend him.

Your excuses for Trump are really weak- there was no victim and everyone does it just don’t hold up.


Here’s an extensive list of the properties where Trump inflated the value.


ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/tto_release_properties_addendum_-_final.pdf

You left out important context again. Businesses have nothing to fear if they are honest, disclose assets and follow the rules and the law. Just like Trump's faulty logic that Americans should be afraid because of the search at Mar-a-Lago, if the FBI can search his place, they could search anyone's.  No, not true.  Most Americans do not have access to classified documents nor do they refuse to return them to the National Archives.  Most businesses do not hide assets, massively inflate them and break the rules and the law.

thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4474774-hochul-tells-ny-businesses-not-to-fear-about-trump-verdict-nothing-to-worry-about/

“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul responded.

The governor provided reassurance to New York businesses after the ruling. “By and large, they are honest people and they’re not trying to hide their assets and they’re following the rules,” she said of the people who own and conduct business in the New York City area.

“And so this judge determined that Donald Trump did not follow the rules. He was prosecuted and truly, the governor of the state of New York does not have a say in the size of a fine, and we want to make sure that we don’t have that level of interference,” she said.

Given Trump's indictments and the fines, I doubt banks are looking forward to doing more business with him.  He put up his own collateral in the E Jean Carroll case.

Repeating the same guy's opinion and bolding it does not make it a fact.

The governor isn't going after other developers because investigating and prosecuting real estate developers is not one of her roles or responsibilities.  She specifically said that her office was not involved in determining the fines.  She was only trying to reassure law abiding real estate developers that they had nothing to fear.


thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4474774-hochul-tells-ny-businesses-not-to-fear-about-trump-verdict-nothing-to-worry-about/

Hochul said there was no way she would overrule Engoron’s decision because “we need a clear separation of powers.” She added that “that’s what was envisioned by our Founding Fathers.”

"the governor of the state of New York does not have a say in the size of a fine, and we want to make sure that we don’t have that level of interference,”

This is your "real estate expert"

Again - Per NY state law there does not need to be a victim to determine fraud.  So this "superb legal analysis " pointing out there was no victim is clearly questionable.

However, as the judge pointed out in his ruling there were victims- taxpayers and other potential lenders that missed out on loans because money was given to Trump based on false valuations.

The fines were not just numbers pulled out of thin air, it was interest and profit that Trump received from loans where he lied and falsely inflated the value of his assets. Trump received lower interest rates based on the inflated valuations.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/16/trump-verdict-judge-new-york-fraud-case

In his verdict, Engoron said that Trump profited by paying lower interest rates when working with lenders such as Deutsche Bank who, because of the fudged financial statements, believed Trump had a higher net worth.

Michiel McCarty, an expert witness who testified at the trial for prosecutors, calculated that Trump saved $168m with lower interest rates because he inflated the value of his net worth. Engoron agreed to this amount, saying that “defendants’ fraud saved them” from having to pay a higher interest.

Another $126m of the fine came from calculating the “ill-gotten profits” Trump received when he sold the Old Post Office building in 2022. Trump was able to purchase the building, which he turned into a hotel, through the use of inflated financial statements.

Still making excuses and defending Trump for fraud.

You can slam the judge and the prosecutors all you want, but Engoron is not some hack. He has a distinguished career on the bench, more than 20 years, he graduated from Columbia, worked as a law clerk for 11 years and worked as a litigator.

Trump's lawyers chose not to oppose the prosecution's request for a non-jury hearing.

You can post all of the opinions that you want, but the fact remains Trump was found guilty of fraud in a court of law. Nothing you post changes that fact.

An interesting perspective on the hush money case. It doesn't answer the important question that lizacreates raised - what is the predicate crime? They do make an interesting point that I hadn't considered. If Stormy Daniels told her story before the election, would it have changed the results of the 2016 election?

www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/opinion/trump-alvin-bragg-manhattan.html

GUEST ESSAY
There Is Much More at Stake in Trump’s Manhattan Case Than Just Hush Money
Feb. 20, 2024

With Justice Juan Merchan’s proclamation last week that jury selection in the Manhattan prosecution of Donald Trump will begin on March 25, it is time for a reappraisal of the case. The charges brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, have been overshadowed by the three other criminal prosecutions of Mr. Trump, but the 34 felony counts constitute a strong case of election interference and fraud in the place where Mr. Trump lived and conducted business for decades.

Mr. Bragg will face tough challenges ahead, fueled by lingering skepticism that critics have harbored about the strength of the evidence and whether Mr. Trump has been unfairly targeted.

But we think he can overcome those hurdles and, by seeking to secure a conviction, reinforce the principle that in Manhattan — as across the country — playing by the rules is critical to the integrity of both our businesses and our democracy.

To understand why this case matters, think about a precedent, an earlier episode of an election-related felony and its cover-up. That was the Watergate scandal, which hung over Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972. Voters did not have the information then to make an informed decision about Mr. Nixon, partly because the criminal investigation and trials of “the plumbers” had not concluded before the election and the majority of the evidence remained concealed. Because the investigation was unresolved, Mr. Nixon’s nefarious conduct worked; he was in the White House when the full revelations came out later, to devastating effect.

The salaciousness of the details in Mr. Trump’s case obscures what it is actually about: making covert payments to avoid losing an election and then further concealing it. Indeed, that is how Mr. Bragg has described the case, that it is “about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.”

It is entirely possible that the alleged election interference might have altered the outcome of the 2016 contest, which was decided by just under 80,000 votes in three states. Coming, as it might have, on the heels of the “Access Hollywood” disgrace, the effort to keep the scandal from voters may have saved Mr. Trump’s political prospects.

The charges against Mr. Trump are also a deterrence against business fraud and a support of legitimate business in Manhattan. They target the essence of Mr. Trump’s identity and reputation, as a businessman, before his entrance into the political arena.

For decades, Mr. Trump lived and ran his businesses in New York City. We now know as a result of multiple New York court proceedings that fraud appeared to have been a regular part of his dealings. The Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg, its chief financial officer, were both criminally convicted of fraud (before Justice Merchan) in 2022. In the New York attorney general’s civil fraud suit, Justice Arthur Engoron ruled last week that the former president is liable as a result of fraudulently manipulating his net worth and ordered him to pay a staggering $355 million penalty — over $400 million with interest.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecution is the next step in probing — and, however much possible, deterring — this pattern of conduct by Mr. Trump and his display of contempt for the rule of law that every other New York business and Manhattan executive has to follow.

To succeed, Mr. Bragg will need to overcome the first impressions of the case from its critics. In this view, it is nothing more than a years-old, stale case about hush money payments to a porn star on shaky legal ground. But since the indictment in April 2023, the legal foundations of the case have been revealed to be much stronger than the naysayers suggested. A particularly strong endorsement, for example, came from federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who rebuffed efforts from Mr. Trump’s lawyers to move the case to federal court.

In his opinion sending the case back to state court, Judge Hellerstein seemed to endorse Mr. Bragg’s theory of the case. He noted that the evidence against Mr. Trump appeared to support Mr. Bragg’s “allegations that the money paid to [Michael] Cohen was reimbursement for a hush money payment.”

For the trial itself, Mr. Bragg has that strong evidence and a favorable jury pool in Manhattan, but he will have to overcome two major challenges in order to prevail: one each for the jury and the judge.

First will be the challenge of how Mr. Bragg and his team present Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, to the jury. Mr. Trump’s trial team will try to hammer Mr. Cohen as an admitted liar and convicted criminal who pleaded guilty to multiple federal crimes for the alleged election interference in New York. But Mr. Bragg and his own team have deep experience with putting on cooperating witnesses with complex pasts.

Mr. Cohen has not wavered in his account of the hush money payments, their election interference purpose and their cover-up. And perhaps most important, everything Mr. Cohen has said is corroborated by documentary evidence and other witnesses. Even after a tough cross-examination in the New York civil fraud case, Justice Engoron found that “Michael Cohen told the truth.” Prosecutors also have the benefit of learning from Mr. Cohen’s civil testimony and can focus on his consistency, corroboration and acceptance of responsibility.

Second, Mr. Bragg and his team will be confronted with the challenge of working with Justice Merchan to prevent Mr. Trump from acting out in front of the jury and thereby disrupting the case or introducing irrelevant information to try to prejudice the outcome. We all saw the spectacle that Mr. Trump created in the New York State civil fraud trial. But we also saw Mr. Trump reined in by federal Judge Lewis Kaplan in the E. Jean Carroll case, which, unlike the civil fraud one, featured a jury watching every move.

Justice Merchan is cut more from the cloth of Judge Kaplan. He is a widely respected and experienced jurist. Moreover, criminal trial rules and practice give him even more latitude than Judge Kaplan had in the E. Jean Carroll civil matter. With a jury in the box, Justice Merchan is unlikely to tolerate repeated outbursts. We got a taste of that at the hearing last week, when he repeatedly and summarily shut down frivolous objections from Mr. Trump’s counsel.

The seriousness of the prosecution can also be conveyed at sentencing. If Mr. Trump is convicted, Mr. Bragg should seek jail time. Each count of document falsification carries a term of up to four years in prison. Many individuals, including first-time offenders, are sentenced to imprisonment for this crime in New York.

Whether it comes to American business or constitutional democracy, individuals who flamboyantly and persistently flout the rules of a system must be deterred for that system to endure. That principle underlines the gravity of the forthcoming case in Manhattan and the cases elsewhere, against Mr. Trump.

Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump. Joshua Kolb is an attorney who served as a law clerk on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barbara McQuade is a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, a former U.S. attorney and the author of the forthcoming book “Attack From Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.”