Posted on 02/21/2024 7:20:38 AM PST by Twotone
On Tuesday afternoon, coming after a New York judge ruled that $354 million must be paid in a civil case against him, Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the 8th Amendment to Truth Social that forbids "excessive fines" for the punishment of crimes.
Text of the amendment in the Constitution's Bill of Rights reads, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
It was posted after Trump was fined over $350 million in the New York City case ruled against him. The ruling came down against Trump from New York Judge Arthur Engoron.
New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the case against Trump, claiming that he would have to pay $354 million in damages for fraud at his businesses in New York City.
According to an Associated Press analysis of cases similar to Trump, the fine and punishment for by the former president would be an anomaly among 70 years of case history.
Of the cases reviewed, only 12 amounted to similar levels of punishment and in all such cases there were victims who suffered losses from fraud. This is not the case with Trump’s business dealings related to the case.
Thought obama did away with the Constitution.
President Trump has said in the past that he has "brand value" that makes Trump properties more valuable just because it's a Trump property.As a case in point, in 2015 John Lennon's 1962 J-160E Gibson acoustic guitar was sold at an auction in Beverly Hills, California for $2.41 million. The catalog price for that guitar in 1964 was $219.50 and the current value of one in excellent condition is $4,000.
If I had owned that guitar in 2015 and chose not to auction it and instead used it as collateral for a loan claiming a value of $2.5 million, would Letitia James sue me because the real value of the guitar is $4,000?
Does John Lennon's "brand" add $2 million to the value of the guitar?
Let's sue Sotheby's for fraudulently inflating the bidding on old furniture and jewelry.
-PJ
Excellent point.
The amount of the “fine” was the “discerned profit” that Trump earned from receiving lower interest rates by inflating his net worth and his ability to repay the loan if it went bad. In other words, it was the “clawing back” or disgorgement of profits in the difference of interest rates he received against what a “normal” borrower would have received. By statute, or at least the judge’s interpretation, no loss by the bank is necessary. It was Trump’s loan “application” that was faulty. The bank didn’t need to even take it, the alleged false info, into consideration.
Don’t forget the 13th Amendment. Democrats will never forgive Lincoln for his war of northern aggression and take away their property, aka slaves.
I wish I knew what a "normal borrower" is, because people like Trump, Musk, O'Leary, etc., certainly are not normal. They are outlier borrowers who deal in 9-figure amounts, not 5-figure amounts.
We can't apply the same rules for a person getting a car loan to a billionaire venture capitalist or real estate mogul. They live in completely different worlds with completely different risk and completely different forms of collateral.
-PJ
And of course 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th amendments.
Should also apply to Mann’s $1M punitive fine on Steyn with only $1 actual damages awarded by DC jury and no evidence provided by Mann to support even the $1.
Meanwhile, before an hypothetical, sane, court throws this out someone should apply the Democrat memes invoked to achieve it at a parallel case. One with falsely inflated political claims made to the voting public in search of political capital. Claims that said politician graduated high in his law school class, when really at its bottom. Claims he was college football QB when that never happened. Claims his wife was killed by a drunk driver, when said driver was sober and death was wife’s fault. Lies about the circumstances of his son’s death. A lot more probably politically false statements by Biden than probably financially false statements by Trump, and a lot more real damages incurred by those conned into voting for Biden than those who accepted Trump’s loan deals.
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