And, well Trump won’t be indicted. Yet. Or maybe ever. But hopefully his house of cards comes tumbling down. At least.
That started years ago really, when no American bank would touch him.
I’m gonna stop you right there, because it’s impossible for any sequence of English words following those four to be a factual statement.
This open up a whole new genre for those liar/truth-teller puzzles.
On the island of Knights and Trump lawyers…
A weakness of The Dope is that we sniff out every rumor on Trump and interpret them all in the most anti-Trump way possible. If some media cites an anonymous source that “an indictment could come as soon as next month” we start salivating that Trump will be in an orange jump suit in a few weeks, even though an equally likely interpretation is that Trump never gets indicted.
It’s possible that the lawyer cited above is as dumb as Powell, Giuliani, et al. but my guess is that he’s telling the truth; there’s little reason to say this only to have Trump clapped in handcuffs soon after. As much as I want to see Trump hear “guilty!” in a court room I’m dubious that he’ll get pinned down by the Trump org.
His job is literally to say the words Loser Donald wants to hear.
They don’t have to not be telling the truth. With lawyers, it’s always a good idea to parse exactly what they did say and exactly what they did not say. Other Dopers have already done so. All that has been said is that he’s not going to be convicted at this point—with a lot of caveats about how things can change. It’s pretty common for indictments to come to pressure others into talking, to help go after someone higher up.
You say you don’t see a reason why a lawyer would say this if it weren’t true. I agree, but I also say the same thing but the other way.: I don’t see a reason to announce it ahead of time. It would make more sense to make a bit deal out of it when it happens. That is when this will make the news.
@Smapti’s reaction would apply either way. Do you have a better one?
Because
We’ve got high hopes,
We’ve got high hopes,
We’ve got high apple-pie
In the sky hopes.
I would say the lawyer’s job is to keep Trump out of jail and I think even Trump would agree with that. If Trump was dictating to the lawyer and they were willing to bold-face lie why wouldn’t the lawyer say that no indictments are coming, even for the Trump Org?
Ain’t that the truth.
Breaking news: the Trump Org is being indicted and Allen Weisselberg will be turning himself in on Thursday. The indictments are sealed until Thursday afternoon. Paywalled stories available on NY Times and WaPo, no free links yet but soon.
oh no
how sad
I’m actually going to agree with Deeg on this one 
Trump, his organization and it’s subsidiaries have been sued a bajillion times. Yes I know this time it’s 1) Criminal charges and 2) He’s not president, but a lot of analysts have already started talking about weak penalties like just fines, and generally sound as if this will be something that will be fascinating to them because they are law-geeks, not necessarily to the public (like a Muller-light).
Of all the "We got 'im"s we’ve had in these years, this one seems the least significant.
I’m not ruling it out though. One interesting facet is that an indictment would mean that he would be obliged to pay back some of his creditors immediately. That could be more painful than anything the courts are likely to do.
You know (or maybe you don’t) how I feel about the passive voice in sentences like this.
WHO WILL MAKE HIM pay anything to anybody? Name me some names or at least job titles.
He has made a career out of NOT meeting his obligations, financial and otherwise. How will anyone enforce this? And WHO will do it??
Oh, it was just something I heard on MSNBC I think. They pointed out that many loan agreements have something in the fine print that if the company is indicted the creditors can sue for the money to be paid back immediately, instead of whatever the original terms were. And furthermore that this had been specifically raised by Trump’s lawyers in arguments against indictment.
Best I’ve found from googling this so far is the following from Forbes:
With a court order, people are allowed to garnish money directly from bank accounts. He doesn’t have to write them a check, his creditors just have to show up with the documents, and walk out with his money.
Liens can be made on his assets. Rent that would go to the Trump org would instead go directly to his creditors.
Assets themselves can be seized and sold off.
These are not contractors that he can bully and ignore. These are large financial institutions that have far more money and power than he does.
Who carries out these actions? What enforcement body/organization?
The courts would be the ones who would pass a judgement, then the creditors would contact the institutions and seize the assets.
I really don’t understand what you are trying to get at here. Do you think that Trump is some sort of god, that he’s untouchable?
These enormous financial institutions go to the court, with their teams of lawyers, and get a judgement. They then go to the banks that hold Trump’s money, and they take it. They go to the buildings that he owns, and they physically seize them for their own. Trump is a tiny little speck to them.
It’s done by lawyers hired by the banks, applying to the courts, to get court orders based on the accelerator /escalator clauses in the debt instruments. (That’s assuming Forbes is correct and the creditors can call in their loans immediately if the company is indicted; that’s called an accelerator or escalator clause, because it allows the creditor to call the loan on an accelerated schedule.)
Trump Org can resist, of course, so it’s lawyers in court, which Trump is very good at.
However, big creditors like a major bank have a lot more resources to pursue a multi-million dollar loan repayment than do contractors stiffed on deals in the hundreds of thousands.
Whether banks will do so will depend on their assessment of the risk they run by letting it ride.
IF they do pursue it and get judgments, the bank’s lawyers then file liens against property owned by Trump Org, or file court orders garnisheeing payments from Trump Org, for example, an order directing tenants in a Trump Org building to pay all their rent to the bank instead of Trump Org.
In extreme cases, the bank can apply to court to have the title to a building owned by Trump Org transferred to the bank. If successful, they take the court order to the relevant property registry office and the registry office transfers title; the building is now the property of the bank, not Trump Org.
None of this happens overnight, and it will depend heavily on the banks’ assessment of their risks. It will also depend on the exact terms of their security interests which Trump Org has given in exchange for the loans.
You’re right, someone has to do it, namely the bank and its lawyers. But the big lenders have much larger resources than most of the people Trump has been involved in litigation with over his career. The big question is their individual risk assessments: is it worth trying to get the money from Trump Org through the normal terms of their contracts, or is it time to go nuclear, to try to salvage something right away? And, if one bank starts doing it, that could trigger a cascading effect, as each bank then has to consider whether anything will be left if it doesn’t act right away, while other banks are foreclosing.
This is a rather salient point. The first entity to claim against Trump Org will have to do a lot of the heavy lifting but is most likely to get full restitution. Once the first claim is effected, it’ll be easier for the others to follow but they’ll be fighting for a shrinking pool of assets.