To elaborate…
Agreed. Did he lie about whether these assets were his to leverage, or did he merely pledged that his family would also guarantee his loans? I’m pretty confident it was the former.
As something a bit more tangible to many of us: what kind of interest rate would you expect to obtain on an automobile loan if your FICO score was 800?
600?
400?
Eventually, you’re shopping for cars from the “buy here, pay here” lot, and you’re paying 22% interest.
Credit score|Average APR, new car
Superprime: 781-850…5.07%.
Prime: 661-780…6.44%.
Nonprime: 601-660…8.99%.
Subprime: 501-600…11.72%.
Deep subprime: 300-500…14.18%.
Just as an example: $25,000 loan, 5-year term.
- The best credit will give you a monthly payment of $472.58/mo
- The worst credit will give you a monthly payment of $584.04/mo
That’s the game that Trump was playing, and – when your car cost a few hundred million dollars – a point or two in interest makes a big difference in cash flow.
I posted this in the wrong thread. Trump’s Motion for a Directed Verdict – restrain your surprise – was denied:
And the judge’s reasons for doing so, don’t offer much hope to Team Trump:
trump team was talking about bringing in something like 120 witnesses. At what point can they say “enough”? He couldn’t bring in like 1000 and bog the whole thing down for a year, could he?
Some quick poking around lead to a random quora post that said:
At the same time, courts will not allow what’s called “cumulative” evidence. You don’t get to prove the same fact over and over. What constitutes “cumulative” is up to the discretion of the court. Two witnesses testifying to the same thing is surely going to be seen as corroboration. On the other hand, twenty witnesses testifying to the same thing will likely be seen as time-wasting overkill.
And from that, I found this:
§ 1.352 Cumulative evidence.
The introduction of cumulative evidence shall be avoided, and the number of witnesses that may be heard in behalf of a party on any issue may be limited.
Top number is 127 potential witnesses. They can’t add to the list now.
The judge has allowed them to call as many of them as they like - but he warned that if they go off topic, he’ll shut them down.
Essentially, there is little point to these witnesses. This is a case about documents. Trump signed documents saying he had X amount of money, and his buildings were worth Y. The prosecution has provided ample evidence that neither of these were true, and the decision makers in the Trump org - Trump and his children - were well aware that these were false figures.
It’s open and shut, really, no matter what these variety of witnesses say.
There is no requirement to show that anyone was actually harmed under the statute ( New York Executive Law § 63 (12) )
The thing about cumulative evidence can best be explained by an “A Few Good Men” quote:
The defense is willing to concede that all 22 witnesses will testify substantially as Corporal Hammaker did if the government is willing to concede that none of them were in Dawson and Downey’s room at 16:20 on September 6.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see something like that come up, particularly if a couple dozen of Trump’s witnesses are going to say there’s “variability in appraisals,” or something similar.
To be completely fair, I suspect that Individual-ONE is not particularly unusual in this respect. To me, this sounds like the status of uber-wealthy people in general and SOP for the finance industry overall. Static wealth is essentially useless: the economy lives on capital flux.
Wouldn’t it be funny if Trump’s lawyers call up defense witnesses who end up saying “I don’t recall.” “Oh, I don’t recall.” “Fifth!”
All these defense witnesses will take the stand wondering of what use to them trump will be after everything is seized.
Another Trump real estate empire bowling pin is wobbling:
My quotes from Letitia James’s evidence summary, but relevant to this particular property:
Remember the real estate/financial services meltdown from around 2008? Trump’s story is essentially a microcosm of the exact same thing.
It does make me wonder whether those defense witnesses are going to say under oath what Trump’s team hopes they’ll say. Might some of them truthfully say, “We wouldn’t have made that loan under those terms had Trump given us different information about the worth of his properties?”
Is this list of defense witnesses publicly available yet? Or will it even be made available to the public prior to them being called to testify?
Very curious what they are supposed to be “experts” in that DJT and his lawyers imagine will help them.
The way the statute is written, I’m not sure it would even be relevant as a defense it a lender said that would still have made the loan. Perhaps it makes a difference to the size of the financial penalty imposed on Trump, I’m not sure.
They’ll be experts on how working in Trumpco was the biggliest and most professional job opprtunity they had after graduating from Trump U, where they learned all about butt-snorkeling to the big guy.
Yeah, I realize they will be spreading a bunch of BS, I’m more interested in knowing if this list is public yet. I can’t find any information on who these witnesses are going to be.
Maybe it will be release soon, like in two weeks.
That makes sense to me. At this point, the DA has already leaped into the air and we’re just waiting to see how hard they land on Trump, Co.
The experts, at least some of them, will likely be real estate appraisers and bank lending officers who’ll testify that Trump’s values were spot on, heck, way undervalued!
And then they’ll have to justify that under cross-examination.