Trump ordered to pay $350 million for fraudulent business practices in New York

Burnhardt

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Today is supposed to be the deadline for Trump to pay the $450M bond in his New York fraud proceedings, lest the Attorney General begin repossessing property. But I can't seem to find anything about it (at least in UK media). What's happening with that?
It's still early hours over there? (Or was at the time of your post).

He might have until the end of the day, which gives plenty of time for his cronies to allow him to cash in his shares.
 

Piscian

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It's still early hours over there? (Or was at the time of your post).

He might have until the end of the day, which gives plenty of time for his cronies to allow him to cash in his shares.
We don't know yet if James has actually filed a seize request with the court. Likely that'll happen today/tomorrow and then they will start approaching the banks and local law enforcement. As exciting as it all is, sadly I don't think anything crazy will happen today at minimum. Trumps actually got plenty of time. He'll find the money or figure out some other delay.

Forbes think it's account search, freeze, and then itll be awhile before we start see them come after his properties.
 

Phoenixmgs

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aaand we once again get confirmation theres different rules for the rich

Just wow, that was a bullshit ruling in the 1st place that you have to front the entire amount to appeal something. You think that would be fair for a normal person to have to front like say $50,000 they got fined for the exact same thing to be able to appeal? That would mean only the rich could possibly appeal such things and not the rich getting a "break". Trump derangement syndrome is strong in this group.
 

Hades

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aaand we once again get confirmation theres different rules for the rich

Its funny this arrangement still applies to rich people who broke the social contract. You'd think doing a coup against the system that keeps going easy on them as a courtesy to their status would see this courtesy revoked.
 

Piscian

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I'm alittle frustrated that they didn't bother to give any reasoning. There's speculation that should he appeal and still lose it would be justification to lower his final penalty.


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Thaluikhain

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Its funny this arrangement still applies to rich people who broke the social contract. You'd think doing a coup against the system that keeps going easy on them as a courtesy to their status would see this courtesy revoked.
Yeah, there's a lot of that going on. It seems there was a bunch of rules that everyone followed, there was a limit to how evil someone could be in exchange for a limit to how much they could be punished for their evil. Trump has broken the rules on the first, and rich people society hasn't caught up yet.
 

Schadrach

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Just wow, that was a bullshit ruling in the 1st place that you have to front the entire amount to appeal something.
The point is to keep the person who already has a judgement against them from using the funds that should go to pay that judgement on lawfare.

I'm alittle frustrated that they didn't bother to give any reasoning. There's speculation that should he appeal and still lose it would be justification to lower his final penalty.
It's pretty common to reduce damages on appeal in large civil cases even if the whole thing isn't overturned.

That said, the court knows where his accounts sit, and if they coupled it with freezing any transactions involving selling, borrowing against or transferring his real estate it probably achieves the same goal - preventing him from frittering away what he needs to pay the judgement on lawfare fighting it. I wouldn't be shocked if the $175m was a very large majority of his liquid assets and set to that number for exactly that reason.
 

Piscian

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Obligatory Legal eagle, though I'm not sure I feel like he provided anything too enlightening beyond what we already know. That goal here is simply stave this off until he's president again so he can somehow wave these away with a wand.

 

Bedinsis

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Last Week Tonight had a segment on how Truth Social is gaining value:

The segment is 8 minutes long. They concluded it's a meme stock, like Gamestop a few years back.
 
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Ag3ma

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Last Week Tonight had a segment on how Truth Social is gaining value:

The segment is 8 minutes long. They concluded it's a meme stock, like Gamestop a few years back.
It looks for all the world like a money-making scam. Obviously, the company is obscenely overvalued, and it's hard to believe that normal, responsible corporate governance would run an IPO at a value so far divorced from the realistic value of the company.

Then the fact that Trump owns so much of it when he's put virtually none of his own money into it. As far as I can see, the company just created a lot more shares and handed them to Trump. By diluting the value of the shares this way, investors aren't even really getting what they are paying for, although one can argue that's their problem: caveat emptor, et cetera.

Create a company, persuade people to invest to create a bubble, then... well. 1) Hope it maintains value long enough to cash out (Trump and colleagues are forbidden from selling up for six months). 2) Use it as leverage for loans, reduced interest rates. 3) Maybe none of these, it's just an ego trip, even if in the long run the value of the company will collapse. In non--scam world, possibly if people can throw enough money at it, it can be invested into other products - most realistically buying shares in other tech/media companies - to better justify its value.

(1) would be thoroughly despicable. Not least because the likelihood is that the "meme investors" are Trump supporters, and to cash out off them would leave them severely out of pocket when the company collapses in value to its natural level. Way to rob your own backers. But for someone like Trump, eminently doable because he is "king of the deal", proud of his ability to gouge other people for profit. It has to be incredibly tempting. Given that the company's only realistic asset is Truth Social (estimated value ~$20-30 million), even if the value of the firm dropped to $500 million at the point the initial investors fled, it would still represent a huge payday. So much for capitalism being about the efficient allocation of resources to meet the needs of society.
 

Piscian

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It looks for all the world like a money-making scam. Obviously, the company is obscenely overvalued, and it's hard to believe that normal, responsible corporate governance would run an IPO at a value so far divorced from the realistic value of the company.

Then the fact that Trump owns so much of it when he's put virtually none of his own money into it. As far as I can see, the company just created a lot more shares and handed them to Trump. By diluting the value of the shares this way, investors aren't even really getting what they are paying for, although one can argue that's their problem: caveat emptor, et cetera.

Create a company, persuade people to invest to create a bubble, then... well. 1) Hope it maintains value long enough to cash out (Trump and colleagues are forbidden from selling up for six months). 2) Use it as leverage for loans, reduced interest rates. 3) Maybe none of these, it's just an ego trip, even if in the long run the value of the company will collapse. In non--scam world, possibly if people can throw enough money at it, it can be invested into other products - most realistically buying shares in other tech/media companies - to better justify its value.

(1) would be thoroughly despicable. Not least because the likelihood is that the "meme investors" are Trump supporters, and to cash out off them would leave them severely out of pocket when the company collapses in value to its natural level. Way to rob your own backers. But for someone like Trump, eminently doable because he is "king of the deal", proud of his ability to gouge other people for profit. It has to be incredibly tempting. Given that the company's only realistic asset is Truth Social (estimated value ~$20-30 million), even if the value of the firm dropped to $500 million at the point the initial investors fled, it would still represent a huge payday. So much for capitalism being about the efficient allocation of resources to meet the needs of society.
The whole thing is certainly an odd duck. Im afraid Im not versed enough in the language to explain what the endgame was for the stock. I actually don't think this whole thing was a money washing scheme. I think Trump is always trying to make money off branding and legitimately suckered the chinese into investing with the wild expectation that hell become president and make truth social somehow the new twitter.

That said its already falling apart. Its too far from the election and his likelyhood of winning the presidency is cratering, ironically abortion, which he wanted no part, became a critical issue.

Stock took another hit this morning. If hes gonna cash out, assuming the stock agencies let him, it better be quick.


 

Silvanus

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Piscian

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Reuters: "The company posted a net loss of $58.2 million in the year ended December 2023, compared with a net profit of $50.5 million a year earlier. Revenue was $4.13 million last year, up from $1.47 million in 2022, it said in a filing."

Am I missing something obvious here? How does $1.47m in revenue accommodate $50.5m net profit that year?
The company posted a net loss of $58.2 million in the year ended December 2023, compared with a net profit of $50.5 million a year earlier. Revenue was $4.13 million last year, up from $1.47 million in 2022, it said in a filing.

200w (12).gif

This is why I prefer to stay in my engineering bubble.
 
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Ag3ma

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The whole thing is certainly an odd duck. Im afraid Im not versed enough in the language to explain what the endgame was for the stock. I actually don't think this whole thing was a money washing scheme.
It has been (still is?) under investigation for potential money laundering by Russian investors. But yes, I don't think that was the aim - it seems to me like another one of Trump's many, many spin-off / licensing / fraud-bullshit schemes, as you say playing off his branding.

I think Trump is always trying to make money off branding and legitimately suckered the chinese into investing with the wild expectation that hell become president and make truth social somehow the new twitter.
Well, yes. Truth Social is basically a failure. It exists, it's worth something, but it's clearly never going to challenge the big players, and mostly exists as a vanity project and money sink. Dumping it is therefore good business. Dumping it for a wild overvaluation even better. I cannot help but feel that this was a lot of what the merger through the SPAC was about: essentially a way to dodge regulations, which may have impeded this wild overvaluation.

Stock took another hit this morning. If hes gonna cash out, assuming the stock agencies let him, it better be quick.
Technically, his own firm won't let him, not stock agencies. TMTG created that rule for itself that hte investors couldn't dump stock for 6 months. What it can make, it can undo, and the board are staffed by Trump cronies, so if he directs them to do that they will. On the other hand, Trump attempting to exit early would almost certainly crater the value of the company anyway, because of the message it sent out.

Am I missing something obvious here? How does $1.47m in revenue accommodate $50.5m net profit that year?
Revenue is income from core operations of the business (its provision of goods/services). However, there are also potentially non-operating incomes too: these are usually things like sales of assets (IP, property, etc.).
 

Ag3ma

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Just wow, that was a bullshit ruling in the 1st place that you have to front the entire amount to appeal something. You think that would be fair for a normal person to have to front like say $50,000 they got fined for the exact same thing to be able to appeal? That would mean only the rich could possibly appeal such things and not the rich getting a "break".
It's perfectly normal to expect someone to pay the penalty before appeal. After all, we jail convicted murderers and thieves pending their appeals, too. In terms of fines, it also restricts individuals dicking around with their money to try to deny it (spending it, or finding wheezes to conceal it, etc.)

Appealing is not strictly dependent on paying - appeals are (should be) inviolable legal process. Denying appeals would be stupid and outrageous. So stupid and outrageous, had you applied some common sense you'd realise that's obviously not how it works. Jurisdictions have systems to cater for situations where individuals have problems paying.

One of these is NY's bond system, where the individual can put a security up in place of paying the fine. This is what Trump was busy doing. Whether he put up a bond or not would not affect his right to appeal, but if he did not put up a bond he would be liable for the full fine. If he paid the fine and won the appeal he would then need to claim the fine value back as compensation. Hence why the bond is an attractive option, especially where the fine might require the liquidation of assets which would then be unrecoverable.

The situational problem here being that the fine/bond sum was huge, and Trump seemingly (but see below) did not have sufficient "cash" to cover it himself, or to satisfy lenders who do not like using real estate as collateral.

Hence the the appeals court reducing the burden of the bond, on the eminently reasonable basis that Trump could not borrow such sums without having to liquidate assets that he might not be able to recover in case of a successful appeal. I will leave aside the issue that Trump claimed he had liquid assets to cover the bond and then claimed he need to arrange a loan without liquid assets to cover it, indicating he - as usual - lied.

This seems fine (heh)...

Trump derangement syndrome is strong in this group.
...so perhaps you should try understand more of the process before demeaning others from a place of ignorance.
 
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Hades

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That would mean only the rich could possibly appeal such things and not the rich getting a "break". Trump derangement syndrome is strong in this group.
''Trump derangement syndrome'' is just a pitiful attempt to shame people for being absolutely correct. Its funny that every prediction or fear that was so ''deranged'' turned true, even the fear he'd attempt to topple democracy by force.