1: Yes it is entirely political. Bigger charities do much bigger fraud. But when you are Trump or Bannon, you have to dot your i’s and cross your t’s knowing you are a target.
2: Exaggerating in business and law is lying
3: Donors complained (possibly a setup, but who knows), so govt got involved. Without NY wall donors willing to complain, NY AG would have no case.
4: It was stupid to lie, stupid to leave a paper trail, and stupid to be texting this stuff. If you are going to skirt the law, have some discretion, especially as a top 10 political target in the country.
Okay, but only this: I don’t believe they intentionally set out to deceive and seem to have done their level best not to blow their donations.
They just got in over their heads—strung out on zoning and environmental regulations and God only knows what other roadblocks an army of bureaucrats could dream up.
Add to this travel, a place to sleep and food—
I’m just reading this into the story, I really don’t know— just speculation. But this matter seems trivial at most. They’re prosecuted for not meeting their own standards, not legal government standards. Should government prosecute people who, say lapse on New Year’s resolutions?
This prosecution, if successful, will pretty much quash individual initiatives in the public sphere. There’s a law somewhere with which they’ll hang anyone by, and if not they’ll stretch it until it does.