Originally published at: Donald Trump committed fraud and lied about his wealth for many years, rules judge | Boing Boing
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Ah, yes, the halcyon days of money laundering and lying to my brother the taxman.
How I miss them.
Still, we’ll always have Russia…x
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So I guess cheating on your taxes and lying about the size of things doesn’t make you smart, it makes you a criminal. Huh. Go figure.
Keep ‘em coming.
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Is any of this going to go anywhere? No one who “believes” in the tangerine ass clown cares about what he did/does/will do. They deify him for it.
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It might, and it might where it hurts Trump most.
The $250 million in penalties she is seeking is the estimated worth of benefits derived from the alleged fraud, she said.
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Bragging about your fraud is how you get nailed in summary judgements. It’s not going to go better for him in the criminal cases.
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The point of filing fraud charges against Trump and the Trump organization wasn’t to prevent him from winning re-election or convince his addlepated followers that he isn’t the second coming. It was to punish him for committing fraud.
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I’m reminded of the quote: “The wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine”.
It may not matter much to his rabid supporters but Trump is finally starting to feel the fire against his ass after decades of flouting the law.
That thought alone make me smile.
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link to ruling
Amazing how quick the losses come when a jury trial is denied.
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And his lawyers get fined $7500 each for continuing to waste the court’s time re-hashing arguments that were already previously settled. An appeal is not looking too good here.
This piece of the judgement really stands out to me:
“It has been stated that ‘[t]he rule is clear that where one party to a transaction has superior knowledge, or means of knowledge not open to both parties alike, he is under a legal obligation to speak and his silence constitutes fraud”).
In sum, the Mazars disclaimers put the onus for accuracy squarely on defendants’ shoulders.
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Luckily the legal and monetary consequences for Trump’s actions are not dependent on what his followers think of him.
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So many good excerpts from the judgement. It’s a scathing response to Trump’s lawyers and all but shuts down every argument they tried to make.
I was curious about the so-called “worthless clause” that Trump claims exonerates him from responsibility and found this very direct take down:
However, defendants’ reliance on these “worthless” disclaimers is worthless. The clause does not use the words “worthless” or “useless” or “ignore” or “disregard” or any similar words. It does not say, “the values herein are what I think the properties will be worth in ten or more years.” Indeed, the quoted language uses the word “current” no less than five times, and the word “future” zero times.
Additionally, as discussed supra, a defendant may not rely on a disclaimer for misrepresentation of facts peculiarly within the defendant’s knowledge. Here, as the valuations of the subject properties are, obviously, peculiarly within defendants’ knowledge, their reliance on them is to no avail.
Thus, the “worthless clause” does not say what defendants say it says, does not rise to the level of an enforceable disclaimer, and cannot be used to insulate fraud as to facts peculiarly within defendants’ knowledge, even vis-a-vis sophisticated recipients.
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Yeah ok but about that:
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The monetary consequences for Trump’s actions are that his cultists will have less money to contribute to his political campaign, what with their contributions going to pay whatever fines the court imposes.
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Im hoping this opens up more room to prosecute more of the 1%. I’m hoping the magas “what about…” everyone and then I hope the Dems "what about… " more of them until they are all in jail and thus ironically completing trump’s drain the swamp promise.
What will really happen is I will be asked to vote for the lesser of two evils or else “all of our rights will be taken away” while, ironically all of our rights are being taken away.
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Just because his lawyers are appealing the ruling doesn’t mean Trump will escape legal and financial accountability. His lawyers appeal rulings like this all the time and almost always lose.
Trump may be nigh untouchable when it comes to political accountability for his actions but the courts have not traditionally been nearly as kind to him.
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I wonder if DeSantis will use this as an excuse to launch an investigation of Trump’s Florida business. That would be fun to watch.
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I just read through the judgement in it’s entirety and it is about as open and shut as one can get. Sure, Trump’s lawyers will appeal but they really don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of overturning this ruling. It’s very clear why the judge was so quick in granting the summary judgement as the defense has absolutely no leg to stand on with regards to the facts.
This is about as succinct as it gets:
As OAG’s first cause of action, the only one upon which it moves for summary judgment,
alleges a standalone violation of Executive Law § 63(12), OAG need only prove: (1) the SFCs
were false and misleading; and (2) the defendants repeatedly or persistently used the SFCs to
transact business.This instant action is essentially a “documents case.” As detailed infra, the documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, satisfying OAG’s burden to establish liability as a matter of law against defendants.
The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact.
The next steps in the case will factor in things such as intent to deceive and disgorgement of profits as a matter of punishment but that’s really immaterial to the facts that have been very, very well established. I’m not a lawyer but any reader can plainly see that Trump has zero chance of winning an appeal.
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