Two days ago Judge Arthur Engoron, found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud and canceled the Trump Organization’s business certification in New York.
What exactly did Trump do that led Judge Engorn to pronounce Trump and Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Jr. “liable for fraud”? According to Engoron, President Trump overvalued property he owned in legal documents used to obtain loans.
What is the legal definition of fraud? According to the Legal Information Institute at Cornel Law School, fraud is explained in civil litigation which this trial is,
“…a misrepresentation of fact that was either intentional or negligent. For a statement to be an intentional misrepresentation, the person who made it must either have known the statement was false or been reckless as to its truth. The speaker must have also intended that the person to whom the statement was made would rely on it. The hearer must then have reasonably relied on the promise and also been harmed because of that reliance.”
Here is a question for each of you. How many times have you applied for a real estate loan and how many of those times has the lending institution relied on your statement of the value of your property?
Never mind. I’ll give you the answer. NONE. There is not a lending institution (except, of course, the federal government) that will make a real estate loan without first conducting their own property appraisal and relying on that and not any statement of value offered by the seller.
Apparently Latitia James is the only person on the planet who has not obtained a real estate loan because she is the New York State Attorney General who brought this case to Judge Engoron. Latitia James has been fixated on Donald Trump since she began her campaign for New York attorney general in 2018, calling him a “con man” and ″carnival barker” and pledging to shine a “bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings.”
She made those remarks made in 2018 — years before she began her investigation of President Trump and the Trump Organization. In other words her findings of fraud were made before she collected any evidence. Clearly Ms. James has a bias against President Trump.
Today Ms. James, Attorney General for the state of New York and lifetime member and donor of the Democrat Party must be doing a happy dance because her fantastical interpretation of “fraud” more to the point, “real estate fraud” law was judged by another Trump antagonist to be a real thing. They determined that fraud is punishable simply for over stating the value of a property.
Whether you like him or not Alan Dershowitz remains the one voice of legal objectivity in a legal world filled with self-aggrandizing lawyers and political hacks. This is what Dershowitz has to say about Latitia James and her fraud suit:
“The first thing I would do if I were Trump’s lawyers is move for the recusal and disqualification of Letitia James,” he said. “I like Letitia James, she’s a very nice person, but she campaigned on the promise to get Trump before seeing any evidence, and so she is just fulfilling a campaign promise.”
And this:
“You can’t have prosecutors even civilly prosecuting a defendant if they’ve made a campaign promise that they have to [fullfill]. They’re not neutral and objective, and look, who are the people who were defrauded here, they claim? The biggest banks in the world.
Why can’t the biggest banks sue him and take care of themselves? Why does Letitia James have to be out there protecting and defending the biggest banks in the country who haven’t sued him at all?”
And this:
The lawsuit “…doesn’t pass the test of a legitimate civil complaint….”
In short, both Trump and Dershowitz agree — the “biggest banks in the world” with the biggest appraisal staffs in the world loaned the Trump Organization money based on their property valuations and they made money from those loans and they had every cent repaid by Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. Those banks never complained about Trump’s property valuations and never sued the Trump Organization for fraud or any related crime based on those property valuations.
What about the judge in this case? Who is Arthur Engoron?
Arthur Engoron is described by one journalist as “hating developers” and in the current civil suit against Trump, real estate professionals virtually laughed at Engoron’s undervaluation of Mar-a-lago by more than $270 M. After grossly undervaluing the Mar-a-lago Engoron and then used his valuation as part of the basis for determining that President Trump committed real estate fraud. And there is more:
“His rulings in major New York City zoning cases were twice overturned by the state Appellate Division, because his decisions showed he had no idea what he was talking about.
When developers wanted to put up a few tall towers north of the Manhattan Bridge, some locals sued to block the project because they said it violated zoning.
Engoron (inset) found that it didn’t — but he just didn’t like it anyway.
He said, “You can’t just do this because the zoning allows it. I just can’t believe this is the case.”
Alas for Engoron, it was the case — so the higher court reversed him.
Last year, Engoron held up a plan to build new housing on a parking lot near the South Street Seaportbecause he claimed the developer had an “impermissible” relationship with the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In fact, the judge just didn’t like the plan.
That decision, too, was tossed in a unanimous decision by the appeals court.”
And this is what that same journalist, Steve Cuozzo a commercial real estate columnist, wrote about President Trump:
“That Trump historically has wildly overvalued his holdings is hardly a secret — his boasts were long a laughingstock among real-estate pros.”
IF everyone knows that Trump “wildly overvalued his holdings” how could they possibly turn around and “…have reasonably relied on the promise…” and then claim harm based on that valuation that they knew was most likely to be “wildly overvalued”.
In the long run, this will be a win for President Trump.
As Americans we have always been known for our “sense of fair play”. Pauper or king we see a bum rap for what it really is - a bum rap by a greedy segment of society and we reject it and rail against it. And THAT my dear readers is why President Trump keeps rising in every poll and so does his war chest.
One last word. In developing this article I searched for that objective media piece that simply gave a fair assessment of what just happened in a court room in Manhattan, NY. With the exception of the interview with Alan Dershowitz and the article by Steve Cuozzo there is none. The main stream parrot guild continues to flap all its wings while flying only in a circle.
Kentucky For Trump
29 September 2023
Excellent post. On at least two occasions I've had a banker request that I INCREASE my own estimate of my property's value. No, there was nothing nefarious, and just like Trump, there was never a question on my ability to pay (or be paid, in the one instance).
I'm not at all surprised to see the progressive cabal continually debase itself to an ever-increasing extent. But it scares the hell out of me to see the number of people whose need to hate far exeeds their need for truth.