Financial accountability is (potentially) coming to former President and current 91 felony count indictee Donald Trump in the sum of hundreds of millions. And I can’t wait.
Trump and his co-defendants are currently embroiled in a civil fraud trial in New York City. Judge Arthur Engoron has ruled that Trump is liable for “repeated and persistent fraud,” which includes lying about the value of some of his properties. Trump, who built his business empire on false claims of his wealth, cemented his image as a dealmaker in his hit television series The Apprentice. I embarrassingly admit that I used to watch The Apprentice. But Trump may be out of business soon, at least in the state of New York, as Engoron has already ordered the cancellation of his business certificates. Unfortunately for everyone, Trump remains the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president.
But the dissolution of Trump’s businesses has been stayed due to an appeal from the Donald. New York Attorney General Letitia James wants to bar Trump and his cronies from doing business in New York, something that is long overdue. Trump is driven by ego, power, and money, and we have to hold him accountable in some material way. Furthermore, James is asking for over $370 million in repayment. This is a very large sum of money and exceeds the original asking price of $250 million. Considering how involved Trump’s businesses have been in the NY scene, this seems like a fair amount to me!
“The myriad deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation,” wrote James in a post-trial brief.
Trump’s attorneys are not pleased with this and are asking for the case to be thrown out. They want Judge Engoron to reject the findings from the trial. According to the clown and his legal mouthpieces, the disputed transactions were beyond the “statute of limitations.” They also tried to claim that the attorney general could and did NOT show any “real-world impact.” Oh, the white-collar-isn’t-real argument! We should not be surprised by this gaslighting rhetoric from the GOP frontrunner’s camp. Judge Engoron summarily dismissed these claims.
With the closing arguments set for next week, Engoron is expected to make his official ruling later this month. And God I hope so because there are so many trials Trump is going to face. I want the hammer to come down already! I don’t think the defendants should be confident as the judge has already shown that he is not buying into the crap coming from their side. For example, he already denied a “motion for a directed verdict.” This would have simply dismissed the case and let Trump off the hook completely for his financial misdoings. Engoron wrote a 3-page opinion in which he called the defense’s experts not credible, which anyone following the trial knows to be true.
The attorney general’s office explains the $370 million repayment for Trump’s fraudulent business activity. James wrote that the defendants “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains through their unlawful conduct.” This is an important point that the public needs to understand. The idea that there was no material damage done from the allegations in this trial is absurd. This is an important point politically as well. Some people like Trump not just for his bigotry, but because they have some ridiculous belief that he is a good businessman and good for the economy. This is a MYTH.
Thanks to Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires, the national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion, the third-biggest increase of any U.S. presidential administration. And that’s one of many ways Trump has damaged the economy during his tenure.
Unless voters get a million-dollar loan and commit tons of financial crimes, I do not think they can follow in Trump’s footsteps. This hasn’t hurt him yet in the Republican polls, but let’s hope he gets some sense of justice in the courtroom. Hopefully, it will hurt him if and when he becomes the GOP nominee.
(featured image: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
