On Friday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the auditing firm for Trump’s social media company and its owner with “massive fraud.” The SEC called BF Borgers a “sham audit mill” and said it “deliberately systemically failed to conduct” audits and reviews that were filed with the SEC between January 2021 and June 2023. Those reports are supposed to inform investors about the value of companies. The SEC fined the company $14 million and banned it from practicing accounting. Its owner, Benjamin Borgers, did not admit wrongdoing but accepted the judgment.
oh my, team trump just said mar-a-lago has been used by trump as a private residence from 1995. this was in response to a question about valuation and restrictions.
interesting, i remember that mr trump lives there as an employee, not as a private residence.
Time from argument to issuing the decision varies widely from case to case. If “about a month” is average for this court (I have no idea) then before the election is not a sure thing.
From what I recall, the whole thing about him being an employee was a legal maneuver to allow Palm Beach to let him live there.
“lf [Trump] is a bona fide employee of the Club, absent a specific restriction prohibiting former President Trump from residing at the Club, it appears the Zoning Code permits him to reside at the Club,” Randolph wrote in the February memo.
He’s already in a spat with them about it so I don’t know if it’ll make things worse than they already are.
Then again, maybe this will give them the basis to shut it down.
From what I’m reading right now, the appeals court judges are expressing “skepticism” about the amount of the judgment and are likely to greatly reduce it, with some possibility it might be thrown out altogether.
At least one judge suggested that the banks were sophisticated entities that had a responsibility to do their due diligence, which sounds like a really bizarre argument to me – AFAICT the judge seemed to be saying that if Trump tried to defraud the banks, the banks should have figured that out, and therefore Trump is innocent.
If this goes the way it seems to be going, then truly Trump was born with a lucky horseshoe up his ass, with everything always falling his way and no consequences for anything.
“Well, the bank should have known it was going to be robbed, so they should have taken better steps to make sure nobody could get their money. That poor robber was just doing his job. Case dismissed!”
In all the talk about Trump’s legal cases being disappeared, I was wondering about this one. I see the last mention about it in the news was right after the election when Trump’s team tried to get James to drop the case in order to unify the country. Yeah, that tracks.
It looks like she has refused so far but how long is that going to last? She’s got to know that she has no chance of collecting a penny of that judgement.
The shady guy is from L.A. and there were lots of doubts about the legitimacy of his company. I have no doubt that if Trump’s appeal ever happens and he loses, the state of NY would have a hard time getting to the money. I don’t think that will happen, though. Trump will threaten the state of NY and get out of this, too. Fear rules the day now.
Never bet against Trump’s uncanny ability to avoid consequences (at least, for now):
Key Points
A New York state appeals court voided a more than $500 million civil fraud penalty imposed on President Donald Trump.
The appeals court said “injunctive relief” ordered by the trial judge in the case was “well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture” at the Trump Organization.
But the order that “directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the appeals court said.
When your business culture is corrupt as all hell, isn’t it important to curb it? Color me not shocked. I wonder what an acceptable fine would be to the appeals court.
