More Trump Criminality

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Kevin Williamson: By misrepresenting his creditworthiness, Donald Trump cheated counterparties of millions of $$ in interest payments and fees. (Though the state fraud law at issue doesn’t require proving reliance and damages, NY proved them anyway.)

Stop Calling Trump’s New York Caper a ‘No Harm’ Crime​

One of the irritating recurrent features of the discussion surrounding Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial is the insistence that this was a “victimless crime.” On a recent episode of National Review’s “The Editors” podcast, my old colleague Rich Lowry insisted repeatedly that Trump’s shenanigans resulted in “no harm.”

This is not true.

It isn’t even particularly difficult to understand—no finance gobbledygook required: By misrepresenting his creditworthiness, Donald Trump cheated the shareholders of the banks that lent him money out of millions of dollars in interest payments and fees. Yes, Trump paid back his fraudulently negotiated loans—but that is irrelevant to the question at hand, which is that the loans themselves were based on bunkum, fraudulently put forward by Trump.

The next line of defense goes: “Well, sure, Trump lied about the value of his assets, but the bankers didn’t just take his word for it.” True, and—so what? That Trump might have carried out his fraud with the knowledge and winking cooperation of bankers who willfully turned a blind eye to his financial misrepresentations ought to surprise exactly nobody. It is as if nobody remembers the events leading up to the financial crisis of 2008-2009, when bankers offered their winking cooperation in all sorts of mortgage fraud by willfully turning a blind eye to the financial misrepresentations of a million deadbeat borrowers not named Donald Trump.

In economic and public-policy analysis, there is something called the “principal-agent problem,” in which executives in a firm (the shareholders’ agents) often have incentives that are different from—and even opposed to—the interests of the shareholders in the firm (the principals). For example—and I am not saying this is what happened in the Trump case; this is only an illustration—bankers may get personal income from getting a deal done by underestimating the credit risk involved, while the risk is borne not by the executives personally but by the shareholders. The whole idea of paying executives in stock options is to align their interests with those of the shareholders by making them current and future shareholders.

In the subprime mortgage fiasco, there were gazillions of “liar’s loans” signed off on by mortgage originators, who pocketed their fees and commissions, and then passed on the dodgy loans to other institutions, which in turn securitized these dodgy loans and found credit-rating agencies willing to label them Triple-A, investment-grade assets suitable for bank reserves. Trump’s apologists argue that he was presenting his fraudulent numbers to “sophisticated financial players,” and he was—as were the people who did so much to create the subprime-mortgage mess.

Trump’s shenanigans are against the law for the same reason ordinary mortgage fraud is against the law. People go to prison for mortgage fraud. It isn’t common, but lying on a mortgage application can, under federal law, bring down a 30-year sentence. Our financial system isn’t made for habitually dishonest people like Donald Trump—it runs, to a surprisingly large extent, on trust. Lenders charge interest in proportion to the risk they are undertaking, meaning banks—as well as their shareholders and, in practice, the taxpaying public that has from time to time found itself on the hook for bank failures—need to know what kind of risk they are taking on.

 

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The lifelong criminal Donald Trump has now spent over $100 MILLION of his cult member's donations on his own personal legal fees.

That's $90,000 per day.

 

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N.Y. appeals judge denies Trump’s second trial-delay bid in two days​

NEW YORK — An appeals court judge on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest bid to delay the start next week of his New York criminal trial for allegedly falsifying business documents to help cover up an affair before the 2016 election.

Appellate Judge Cynthia Kern denied Trump’s request to delay the trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday, and a gag order against him imposed by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan remained in effect.

It was the second time in as many days that the appellate court rejected a Trump request to delay the trial.

Trump, the first ex-president to face criminal prosecution, has been indicted in three other jurisdictions with charges pending in each. He has pleaded not guilty to all 88 counts he faces.

Steven Wu, an attorney from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, argued in court Tuesday that there was no basis to delay the trial for reasons related to the gag order. Trump’s public criticism of court personnel and others has generated threats and harassment from his followers, making the gag order necessary, Wu said.

“This is a pattern of misconduct that causes predictable, terrifying consequences that the order here is intended to correct,” Wu said.

 

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OLD MAN CANT STAY AWAKE WITHOUT HIS AFTERNOON NAP

 

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Trump is so stupid. He triggered FISA by calling the Russian embassy 140 times during his campaign.

 

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OLD MAN CANT STAY AWAKE WITHOUT HIS AFTERNOON NAP


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Mike Dunford (@questauthority.bsky.social)

The RNC's Senior Counsel for Election Integrity is currently under indictment for election-related fraud.

bsky.app

 

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Former official told investigators Trump had 'no standing declassification order' regarding documents, filing says

A former administration official told investigators that President Trump had "no standing declassification order" regarding documents in his possession, a filing says.

t.co