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I agree that politics was a motivation in pursuing the case, but it seems beyond doubt that Trump's organization did, in fact, engage in "creative" (i.e. fraudulent) accounting. I mean, he's a New York ex-Democrat real estate magnate. What were the chances that everything was above-board?
Selective prosecution is a problem, but it's a lot less of one when you aren't guilty. It's like the left-wing pundits who are angry about air time being given to Biden's cognitive decline. DOJ prosecutors can certainly communicate prosecution decisions to the public in a politically-motivated way, and the media can decide how much to cover them, but ultimately the effectiveness of these attacks hinges on Biden actually having declined cognitively. At some level, Democrats are responsible for painting themselves into a corner with this liability. So it is for Republicans who are staking their political future on someone as unreliable as Trump.
Trump literally campaigned on 'I know how to deal with corporate criminals because I was one'.
'Oh no, the open criminal we decided to turn into the messianic central pillar of our party is being prosecuted for the crimes we all knew he was committing' is not a super sympathetic position. You rolls the dice, you takes your chances.
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It was the sole motivation. If you don't understand that you don't understand the moment.
No one was harmed. New York brought a civil case, not a criminal case, because no laws were broken. The banks involved had all their loans paid back, and testified in Trump's defense. So what creative accounting? That the appraised and assessed values of Trump properties are not the same thing? This is like if I accused you of having child porn on your computer, and someone said: Well, it can't be denied that there's porn on his computer.
You're trying to turn this into a both-sides case. It isn't. Political actors who promised to bring Trump down brought him in court, declared that his assets weren't worth as much as he said they were, then used their own valuations to accuse him of
This is a form of victim-blaming: Democrats prosecute Trump to an unprecedented degree, and the logic says Republicans have to abandon Trump because he's the risky one. Do you think other Republicans will not be subject to these same attacks in future? This is a one-off? The Great Trump Exception?
For those of us who are unfamiliar with real-estate finance, can you explain the difference between them and how it applies to this case? They both sound like they mean 'How much is this building/land worth?', but if there is a legitimate difference between them....
An appraisal will tell you roughly what the market value of a property is. An assessment will tell you what the government values the property at for tax purposes. You might think that those should be the same, but in many, if not most, jurisdictions, they aren’t. Some city and county assessors even provide separate assessment and appraisal values each year.
The last time we discussed this, I gave the example of farmland in my area, which is pretty much universally assessed at around $2,000 per acre, even though the sale price of farmland is typically close to $20,000 per acre. The counties choose to assess farmland at a far lesser rate than its market value in order to keep farming financially viable in the area. It’s essentially a sort of hidden subsidy. Some jurisdictions also cap the rate at which property taxes can rise from year to year, which can eventually cause assessments to fall far behind appraisal values, even if they were once fairly close.
I mean California is the obvious example that does this explicitly. I believe Cali assessed tax value is based on approximately last sale value.
Two identical properties next door each other will have vastly different assessed values. If house 1 was last sold in 1955 it’s value will be like $10k for taxes even if the identical house next door sold in 2023 has a tax assessed value of $3 million.
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I think this mistakes the nature of politics. Political actors will virtually always use whatever weapons they can against their opponents. It's not as if we've existed in a state of peace and harmony up until this moment.
Democrats will not sue DeSantis for fraud like they did to Trump for the same reason that Republicans did not impeach Obama for perjury like they did to Clinton. That is, they don't have the weapon available to use.
Trump is indeed the great exception, in that he has handed his enemies a uniquely large array of weapons to use against him.
Well, I saw a lot of online rejoicing that DeSantis was a fool and an idiot to take on Disney with its deep pockets and array of the best lawyers money can buy, and that they would totally destroy him in court.
How's that working out for Disney?
DeSantis managed to hobble his campaign all on his own, but Disney lawsuits had nothing to do with it.
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This seems untrue for any sense more meaningful than the tautological one where any tool unused 'must' have not be available.
Eric Holder was not impeached nor charged with contempt of congress after the DoJ switched hands, despite his original Congressional contempt vote being widely bipartisan. Despite the fevered wishes of every progressive on the internet from 2003-2008, Dubya never faced criminal charges. Lujan Grisham was not impeached, the calls to censor couldn't even get all Republicans, and she will not be facing a hundred citizen grand juries for clearly unconstitutional executive orders; she has not so far faced a single one.
I'm not proposing people avoided these mistakes out of the goodness of their cold, shriveled hearts. Indeed, there may well have been tactical causes, or even simple ignorance or inability. And yet.
That's an interesting specific example to bring forward! Let's go drink from a tall glass of water and look at some headlines from a little over a year ago.
That's on me, I set the bar too low.
Ok so fair call out, but I'm not sure to what extent we actually disagree on substance. As you say, there may be tactical restraint, or ignorance or inability. But my core position is that political actors will attack their enemies in the most effective ways they can, and the most effective methods available will vary according to the person and situation. And I'm not sure that you even disagree with that.
I think I disagree.
Yes, there's a trivial sense that we aren't going to see DeSantis sued to destroy or dissolve his real estate business operating under New York State laws, given that he doesn't have one. I'm rather hoping that's not the core and central argument for your claim. Political actors have made no small number of attacks, both legal and social, against people who did nothing, or did nothing legally wrong; that fraud case against DeSantis is just the funniest. Federal politicians have been lost their seats and been convicted for allegations that didn't make sense and weren't true.
Political actors are neither unified nor rational nor solely motivated by effectiveness. Their preferred approach will vary according to the person and situation, but they'll also vary based on personal flippery, on the motivations of volunteers and donors, and on the recognition of norms and fear of retribution, among other things. And many of these, most critically, will be more important than the actual guilt or perceived vulnerability of the target.
That's why for Trump -- with all of his clear and tremendous faults -- also got slapped with a wide variety of aggressive lawsuits based on hilariously false claims and/or with no interest in the facts. It's very unclear that this will be different for anyone else; it's not even clear that the trial results would be tremendously different.
Yes, this didn't happen historically. There were a ton of calls among progressives to jail (or try in the Hague) Dubya, but it never happened. But it's been sixteen years since the end of the Dubya presidency. Even ultimately 'unsuccessful' attacks have turned out to work, progressive efforts to take over institutions that would defang or blunt these attacks have been wildly successful, and we've learned the hard way that a small industry can operate solely around building this class of tool.
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I would like for you to spell out and defend the idea that Trump is the only president who has committed actions his enemies can call crimes and attempt to prosecute.
I don't claim this. Nixon would also have been prosecuted for crimes if Ford hadn't pardoned him.
"Actions his enemies can call crimes" carries the connotation "action which his enemies would call crimes but other people would not". Nixon's actions wouldn't count under that, even if it is literally true that his enemies call them crimes.
I think that Nixon's actions were both less bad than Trump's and less clearly criminal.
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The case was a civil action brought under New York Executive Law § 63(12), which explicitly enables the Attorney General to bring suit against someone engaged in repeated fraud. Not all fraud is criminal; most is a civil matter.
One of Trump's properties jumped in reported value from $80 million to $150 million between 2005 and 2006 without explanation. He admitted under oath in 2007 that he overstates property values and thinks most other people do as well. Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress that Trump regularly inflated or deflated the values of his properties for ego or tax purposes. Trump's own CFO testified at trial that Trump had overstated property values by hundreds of millions of dollars (around double their value). In facilitation of this, he also falsely reported other data about his properties, such as reporting a 10,000 sq. ft. apartment as 30,000 sq. ft. These are not small technical discrepancies, but a repeated pattern of massively fudging numbers for financial and tax benefits.
The ones that engage in decades of systematic fraud, yeah.
Got it. The Democratic prosecutor who campaigned on going after Trump for political purposes is a one-off that will only be used when Republicans deserve it. Incidentally, Trump deserved it. Maybe if they prosecuted literally anybody else for financial crimes in the State of New York, I'd believe you.
Maybe I'd take your position a little less skeptically if you were arguing that every politician in the stock market, or every banker behind 2008, should also be charged with fraud. I'd still think it was convenient, since none of those people are actually getting prosecuted, and likely never will. But at least you could claim that your claim to principles is principled.
I'm sure plenty of Democrats would like to go after everyone with an (R) after their name, but the ability to successfully prosecute or sue political opponents is still heavily contingent on them having provably committed crimes or torts. This is not an endorsement of selective prosecution, merely an observation that Trump is a uniquely vulnerable target because he can't seem to stop breaking the law. It's hard to discern if his legal troubles represent an unprecedented weaponization of the justice system versus him being an unprecedented outlier in terms of surface area for liability. Maybe indiscriminate Democrat lawfare against Republicans will become the norm, but it's hard to conclude that based on evidence available today since it's so deeply confounded by the singular choice of opponent.
What are you talking about? Politicians break the law all the time! Whether it's through illegal schemes as part of the political process, or graft conducted at the expense of the political office. Explain to me why Trump "can't seem to stop breaking the law" compared to: Nancy Pelosi's infamous insider trading; Diane Feinstein's husband profiting off business ties to China; Joe Biden profiting off Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings.
American politicians break the law all the time by selling themselves to the highest bidder, and you want to grandstand about how Trump keeps breaking the law. I bet you jaywalk.
Insider trading laws are extremely lax with regard to transactions made by congresspeople. This is very convenient for them, and they should be pressured to ban congressional stock trading. The same can be said for Feinstein's conflicts of interest due her husband's business ties. Improper? Unethical? Sure. Illegal? They have expensive law degrees and lawyers (also with expensive law degrees), and they wrote the laws. Chances are they know exactly where the line is and didn't cross it. Prosecutors can't be held responsible for selective prosecution if the law hasn't actually been broken; they have no recourse even if they think lawmakers are scumbags that belong in prison.
There is an impeachment investigation over this run by congressional Republicans. It's not going well, by the way. I share your cynicism that he might have colluded with his son in influence peddling, but coming up with compelling evidence that stands up under scrutiny hasn't gone well even with motivated people at the helm. Trump, by contrast, managed to get caught on tape admitting that he possessed classified documents that he didn't declassify before leaving office. He's not merely unethical (like most of Washington), but also criminal (by the letter of the law) and incompetent. This astonishing combination of characteristics suffices to explain his legal troubles, or at least casts doubt on the theory that unprecedented Democrat norm-breaking is primarily to blame.
I've been browsing themotte for a while now and at times have been tempted to comment. This is the first time I feel i have something to contribute to a conversation. My response to this bit is catalyzed by the recent attention @ymeskhout has been bringing to lawfare.
If there is low-grade or open conservative hostility toward the establishment that Trump is the avatar of, it is because of this attitude of "we make the rules, we sneeringly violate the spirit of them and then aggressively prosecute those who don't play the game as sociopathically as we do." I am tired of people like ymeskhout sitting asking about evidence when we all know exactly what game is being played and the only thing that matters is exactly how well the corruption is concealed and how well the law is "played around".
I would argue now that the Democrats as a party have becoming exceptionally more skilled than Republicans at concealing their corruption and gaming the system to the point that they are comfortable openly flaunting their impunity. The anger that Trump is the voice of is the increasing modern understanding of just how rigged the game is and who exactly is rigging it.
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I think that's attributing too much competency to them.
Was the Obama admin's bragging of being 'scandal-free' true because they were so good at 'knowing where the lines is' or was it just because 99% of the talking heads on TV were so starry-eyed, financially-tied, potentially blackmailed that they could not do their job and uncover scandals? Heritage.org seems to lean toward the latter. Benghazi? Not a scandal? Clinton's server? Not a scandal?
I think being a good politician is 50% knowing-where-the-line-is (which I don't think anyone can do 100% as there are thousands of potential felonies at any given time), and 50% being in the right position with the people who could potentially get you in trouble.
The magic of 'A federal criminal investigation produced no charges, but FBI Director James Comey reported that the secretary and her colleagues “were extremely careless” in handling national secrets.'. See also the infamous Steele dossier.
Here is another example. Before you exclaim 'But he did get in trouble!', people who are quite a bit on the left seem to agree with my version of things. Perhaps there needed some kind of cultural moment for the 'gay top Democrat donor' privilege to be overridden...
Sometimes it seems that we need the police to protect black lives from Democrats.
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Are you suggesting that Trump is the first person to ever be found liable for fraud in New York? I'm willing to bet a large amount that's not true.
If you are going to keep making this claim you need to show another victimless fraud case that occurred that had zero pressure from an victim pushing for prosecution.
We can avoid discussing whether Trump did fraud. Just show me a victimless fraud case in NYC.
Here.
It's pretty rich to claim that that's "victimless", because if that is true, it would have undercut the justification for the case. That case is clearly premised on securities fraud harming either existing shareholders or shareholders who bought shares based on the fraudulent claims. Moreover, it is inconceivable that this had "zero pressure" from a victim (or at least a self-proclaimed victim), because lots of people think they're "victims" of climate change (and thus, any potentially fraudulent statements made about it). It's the foundation of the case, whether or not it is ultimately flawed, and that foundation is contrary to how you've portrayed it.
This is vastly better binned in the Matt Levine category of "Everything Is Securities Fraud". We know, it is baked in, that literally any conceivable case of securities fraud (literally "Everything", says Levine) will at least be attempted at some point. It's like Rule 34 for a particular statute.
But yeah, if you think that the Trump case is most akin to an area where everyone pretty much agrees that it's all just lawfare, grasping at every possible iteration of a theme, often specifically to pursue specific political goals (like climate change) rather than focusing on remedying fraud-as-traditionally-understood, then I think the point is actually made.
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There is like 30 pdf in there. Explain relevance and how it applies.
You asked for
I provided it. If you don't want to read it, don't ask for it.
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