And admitting guilt.
Fair point. I was thinking about his white collar stuff, not his sexual predation and related offenses.
Sounds like Kevin O’Leary. He’s a Canadian who appears on the Canadian version as well, called “Dragon’s Den”. I’ve seen him spouting that line.
@Euphonious_Polemic has the best response to it:
Additionally, if you went to the bank to get a loan, and for collateral you said your house was three times its actual size, you would have committed fraud to obtain that loan. Maybe the bank wouldn’t have lent you the money, or you would have had a higher interest rate.
I believe the right wing defense to this is that “there was no victim” since “the banks were repaid their loans.”
But, it not only deprives the bank of money it might have otherwise collected in interest, it also penalizes those competing businesses who are playing by the rules. If Trump can lie about his assets, and get away with it, then it encourages others to do the same. And then you no longer have a stable market.
Moreover, I believe that Donald’s fraud also included devaluing property to cheat on his taxes. Again, if you or I lied about how many bedrooms our house had to not pay so much in property taxes, damn straight we’d be prosecuted. And the victims are those citizens who might have otherwise benefited from the taxes that should have been collected.
It’s disingenuous to say that there were no victims.
Besides, the government often prosecutes “victimless crimes”. Drug possession is a prime example. Claiming that there were no victims isn’t any kind of defense to the fraud.
Just for the record, part of the confusion may be that in the first Carroll case to go to trial, he appealed and apparently DID secure it with cash (approx $5.5 million), but that was (in the news cycle and countless Trump trials) ages ago.
ETA - switched to less detailed but non-paywalled link
I dunno. I don’t know how much discretion the courts have with supersedeas bonds. The article cited upthread says its rare.
Here’s an article from last September about the NY state law. It’s partially pay-walled, depending if you’ve read a different New Yorker article recently:
From 1957 to 1981, Javits served as a U.S. senator for New York, but before that he held the office that is currently occupied by James. As the New York attorney general, he earned a reputation as a liberal prosecutor who was willing to take on powerful interests. In 1956, his final year in office, he urged the state legislature to pass a new law that would give his office the power to investigate and bring actions against businesses that engage in “repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality in the carrying on, conducting or transaction of business.” Invoking this broad statute, Section 63(12) of New York’s Executive Law, the attorney general’s office has brought cases ranging from accusing three bus companies of violating New York City regulations on idling to accusing ExxonMobil of misleading investors about the business risks presented by climate change.
The most remarkable part, and the real scandal of all of this, is that it’s been widely known for decades in business and journalistic circles that Trump has routinely exaggerated the value of his assets. When the business journalist Timothy L. O’Brien wrote this in a 2005 account of Trump’s career, Trump sued O’Brien and pursued him through the courts for years before a judge dismissed the suit. It wasn’t until 2019, when one of Trump’s own former associates, Michael Cohen, made the same claim in congressional testimony, that prosecutors got interested.
Another aspect is that corruption is contagious. If “everyone does it” becomes the common attitude, then corruption spreads.
Corruption means that the cost of doing business increases, because of all the grift that gets baked into the system. Honest businesses have to start greasing the skids as well, in order to compete. The net cost of things like new buildings goes up. Taxpayers get less value for their public services than in a clean market, because new schools, and roads, and bridges, all have a corruption fee built into them.
Corruption is a hidden tax imposed on the citizens by the crooked businesses.
Here’s an IMF paper on the economic cost of corruption. It looks at more blatant corruption, like outright bribes, but highlights the effects of a loss of public trust.
One of my good friends did quite a bit of pretty high level business in NYC. I remember sometime back he observed that Trump behaved exactly the same as the money guys/titans of industry he dealt with. Blowhard bullies used to getting their way.
Just one anecdote, and not establishing widespread fraud. More just suggestive of a prevailing attitude.
Good cite, thanks.
This is why Mexico continues to be a backward nation, even tho is should be a great place. Corruption is a way of life, the Cartels have taken over.
Here’s an article by a civil litigator of 40 years experience, plus federal prosecutor, and former junior Watergate prosecutor (some are still around ?!?).
He thinks the appeals court decision to cut the bond is a fair result.
As much as I’d like to see Trump burn, I’m not willing to torch concepts such as due process and fairness in order to set his world aflame. I’m fine with the appellate court’s decision. It’s infuriating that someone who seeks to tear down the system is proteted by it, but that’s just how life works sometimes.
I was 25 during the Watergate hearings, so yeah, still around.
Another of the junior prosecutors on the Watergate case, Jill Wine-Banks, is also still around. I see her regularly on MSNBC, as a guest commentator on legal matters.
I guess I am just surprised that they’re still active professionally.
We all heard last Monday that the NY appeals court without any explanation reduced the bond amount to a paltry $175 million and gave Trump 10 more days to post it. That means D-day should be in about 48 hours. Anyone heard anything about him posting the bond yet?
No. And I predict Trump requesting, and the court granting a delay.
Waiting until the last minute keeps people talking about Trump which is something he loves. Assuming he can post the bond, and I’m assuming he can, he won’t post it until the last minute.
No but thanks for the reminder