Posted on 09/01/2023 9:15:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
Letitia James, who ran on a “Get Trump’ ticket, filed a civil action against President Donald Trump’s Organization that was unsealed in New York.
According to Yahoo News, she wants Trump and his organization found guilty without a trial:
While running his father’s family real estate empire, former President Donald Trump bloated his net worth by a staggering $2 billion, New York Attorney General Letitia James charged in asking a Manhattan judge to rule against the Trumps before their upcoming $250 million civil fraud trial, according to court filings unsealed Wednesday.
James asked State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron to resolve one of the fraud claims facing the Trumps encompassing a chunk of the case slated for trial Oct. 2 by recognizing a “mountain of undisputed evidence” of rampant fraud.
“No trial is required for the Court to determine that (Trump) presented grossly and materially inflated asset values in (financial filings) and then used those (filings) repeatedly in business transactions to defraud banks and insurers,” the filing said.
She doesn’t even want him to have a trial!
James accuses him of inflating his network by $2 billion to strengthen the Trump Organization’s position in the city’s real estate market.
James has been investigating Donald Trump for years. She couldn’t find anything criminal so she went for civil cases. In addition to the one on October 2, she has one for an alleged pyramid scheme on January 29.
GO DEEPER
Among the alleged wrongdoings, AG James claims Trump overvalued by up to 39 percent assets like his New York skyscrapers, golf courses and residential properties, and his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida. Doing so, she claims, allowed the Trump brand to deceive banks, lenders, and business partners with “hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten savings and profits.”
[They all have appraisers.]
Despite the Trump Organization laying claim to a real estate empire worth $6.7 billion in 2014, the New York attorney general claims she has hard evidence the combined value did not exceed $4.5 billion.
As part of the unsealed documents, AG James includes public statements by President Trump accusing her of being a racist and saying that the world would have suffered a nuclear attack from North Korea if he had not chosen to forgo his lucrative career and serve the public as president.
In addition to seeking a $250 million judgment against the Trump Organization, AG James hopes to prevent the Trump family from doing commercial real estate deals in New York for the next five years and permanently bar family members from running or helping direct businesses.
Leftist Democrats have called for lawsuits against Donald Trump and his family to bankrupt them. The locales Democrats chose are filled with far-left Democrats.
Now far-left James doesn’t even want the Trumps to have a trial. The Democrats are tearing our Constitution and justice system apart.
The stench of Marxism is in the air…
You nailed it. My first thought was Motion for Partial Summary Judgment. This type of motion is common in civil litigation.
This is not a criminal case. It’s a civil case, and the State of New York has no reason to be a party to the case. They didn’t lend him money, and he never applied for a loan from them.
Good points.
And don’t you have to proves some sort of loss on someone’s
part before you go after him.
If he paid his real-estate loans in a reasoned manner, who
gives a rat’s behind?
Did he defraud anyone? Not really.
He paid his bills in a manner that was customary under
the laws of New York. Even if he had to declare a corporate
bankruptcy, he did it by the laws on the books, and his
personal worth was not pertinent.
Lol.
Someday, when things are much worse than now, the memory of your posts will make me smile.
Probably from prison for posting here...
She wants her 250 million. Sounds like extortion.
Is Letitia saying Trump deprive the City/State of their tax cut? That would be undervaluing. I’m confused.
Trump says that nobody was harmed because the loans were paid back in full, real estate values are always changing, and negotiations always start high and meet in a middle that is agreeable to everyone.
-PJ
Book ‘er Dano.
To save democracy they must end democracy. The word for that is tyranny. That’s their doing. Not ours.
Sounds like everyday business to me.
-PJ
Hard evidence? Is she relying on tax assessment value vs real estate current (at the time) market price? Those are always lower. Has she ever owned any real estate?
Is that a joke? Because it certainly is NOT a "crime." If I hire an appraiser who says my amazing house is worth $800,000, and therefore I want to take out a home equity loan on that amount, the bank is forced to accept it? No. They conduct their own appraisals 10,000 times every day to mitigate their own risk. As do insurers. As does the IRS and NYS Dept of Finance - after taxpayers UNDERstate the value of their property to try asnd reduce tax liabilities. NONE of this is "fraud". It is how the game is played, Democrat politicians with real estate holdings, and I bet even Letitia James has family members who have done the same.
They ran this as a proof-of-concept on Alex Jones.
The judge denies a jury trial and defaults him guilty. He is not allowed to profess innocence or present evidence under penalty of contempt.
Then the judge convenes a jury trial to determine penalty phase, telling the jury the defendant is guilty and their job is to determine the appropriate punishment.
In any given jurisdiction where property is assessed for tax, that is the job of the duly appointed Assessor's Office (with some name variation, but the duty is the same). Based on what THEY assess the value of the property to be (which could be their estimate of the market value, but not always; not all places assess property the same way), the corresponding authority that levies taxes (such as the Treasurer) will then charge the property owner with whatever tax is owed based on the assessed value (times whatever tax rate is applicable for their jurisdiction).
For any of this to be relevant, there would have to be some allegation that Trump actually interfered with the assessment process by the city/county that resulted in his properties getting undervalued for taxation purposes.
But that's not what's been alleged, as far as I'm aware.
She's alleging that he "defrauded" the banks by inflating his property values to get higher lines of credit against his equity. You might be right that she's comparing the assessed value of his property for tax purposes to what he put down on loan applications.
Trump says that nobody was defrauded, and nobody was harmed because the loans were paid back in full, with interest.
This simple appeal to a jury should be all that Trump's team needs to make to put the whole thing in a context any jury would relate to:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how many of you have seen the public television program Antiques Roadshow? How many times has the appraiser given a value "at auction" (presumably the market value) and then told the owner that for "insurance purposes" the value would be 20% higher?-PJWas that public television program encouraging its viewers to commit insurance fraud? Did anyone who actually insured their valuable item for higher than the appraised market value commit insurance fraud? Should the PBS network be indicted as a co-conspirator to commit insurance fraud?
The answer is obviously "No," and President Trump did not commit fraud against the bank either when he didn't use the county's appraised tax market value.
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