Trump ordered to pay $350 million for fraudulent business practices in New York
- Thread starter Piscian
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There's a sort of point here that a lot of rich people are not well scrutinised. Partly because rich people have a lot of expensive accoutants and lawyers to keep things hidden, a lot of very useful connections to control narratives and dissuade adverse attention, and that of course they lobby the crap out of governments to not be scrutinised.
When anyone runs for high public office, however, this tends to significantly increase the scrutiny they receive. It should then be no surprise that murky dealings that would normally fall under the radar might come back to bite them.
However, the idea that the best and fairest solution is that we should not heavily scrutinise people who run for the highest offices in the land is one I find mystifying.
I'm all for getting everyone for crimes but there is also the thing that you can get just about anyone for something. Like when a cop pulls you over, they can get you for something if they want to. Trump's fraud case was civil, not criminal, and they also used a law in a way that it's never been used before. It seems like it's not only going to get successfully appealed but it's also something most rich people can be gotten for. It's in essence a cop pulling you over and finding something to get you on, but for rich people.
What about the AG flaunting that she's biased and specifically targeting someone, that's something everyone should be against as well.
So you can't just say riots are bad? You can't make that rather simple declaration?"But Moooooom, all the other kids were doing it"
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There's a pretty big difference between a cop pulling you over for not using a turn signal within 200 feet of a turn, and Trump getting slapped for financial fraud.
Yes, most people can be ticketed for something if you really try hard. A cop can even make something up if they really don't like you, like giving you a ticket because they say they saw you using a cellphone while driving. A $200 ticket for using your cellphone is still in no way comparable to half a billion dollars in documented financial fraud, with many receipts.
You can call this a witch hunt if you want, but it's very clear that Trump is guilty of fraud and it isn't even difficult to prove. There's records of what he claimed the values of his properties were to banks and what he claimed the value was to the government. It isn't even smart or well hidden fraud. Saying that other people do the same thing is not a valid defense.
People park illegally all the time, but if you get a ticket you don't go to court with the defense "but other people did it and didn't get caught! Why are you singling me out?"
Trump got caught doing something stupid and now he's paying the price, and no one who believes in law and order (like Republicans claim to) should be against that.
So do you have a problem with an AG campaigning on putting away specific mobsters as well?
Not only this, but Trump has openly claimed that the fault lies with the banks for believing him.
I'd also point out that this sort of fraud has the potential to cause a very significant amount of damage - the potential losses if something went wrong could pose a risk to the ability of a lender to operate, which then would also cause knock-on effects to disadvantage other potential borrowers, and (through contagion) cause harm to other financial institutions. There is a vested public interest in regulating the mechanisms by which businesses operate to prevent wider damage to society.
Also, it's worth noting that the appeal is very unlikely to overturn the verdict (although certain penalties might be reduced or removed). This law has been on the books for ~70 years and used in around 150 convictions. If there were something fundamentally wrong with it, I think appeals courts would have taken action long ago. From what I have read, the only really novel application was the requested penalty of dissolving the Trump Organisation, as this has previously only applied to particularly egregious offences such as companies selling fake products. That particular sentence may well be denied by the appeals court.
If a right wing group of any stripe protested and caused similar harm in a similar time frame, the folks pretending the BLM protests were totally peaceful would be demanding that any people or groups involved be considered terrorist organizations.
They did manage to make it 48 hours before someone live streamed themselves doing an arson with a person inside the building, at least. That would be in Minneapolis, where the protests started. Guy plead guilty and was sentenced well below federal guidelines, getting 10 years for burning someone to death inside a pawn shop. Fiery but peaceful, as CNN put it.
A lot of that is probably because it wasn't, you know, a "group" in any meaningful sense of the word. Boogaloo boys mixed with protestors mixed with opportunists mixed with provocateurs. And there were tens of thousands of arrests. Lots of convictions. Less than 1 in 20 protests caused damage, and hundreds were charged and convicted of serious crimes. For the sheer scale involved, they were peaceful
It's worth noting that the prosecutors were also asking for well below federal sentencing guidelines at 12 years. Not exactly a case of there being a rogue judge
New York appeals judge rejects Trump’s request to delay hush-money trial
Lawyers had argued trial should be postponed while they seek a change of venue to move it out of heavily Democratic Manhattan
www.theguardian.com
Oh my goodness. Suing the judge?
This follows the distinctly ugly tactic of going after the judge's daughter.
New York appeals judge rejects Trump’s request to delay hush-money trial
Lawyers had argued trial should be postponed while they seek a change of venue to move it out of heavily Democratic Manhattan
Oh my goodness. Suing the judge?
This follows the distinctly ugly tactic of going after the judge's daughter.
That's not really the case though. The Republicans keep trying to prop up Hunter exactly because they can't find anything on his dad.
They certainly nailed Hunter, and that's fine, because he has strayed from the tracks.
Yes, if you really want to dig hard enough, you can find something on anyone. But everyone surely has to understand the difference between a vast battery of incidental happenstance, grey areas or occasional carelessless, and really big stuff - like a years-long intentional fraud worth hundreds of millions, or deliberately attempting to overturn an election result.
For instance, sure, Biden and Pence wrongly had some classified documents at home. But few, they seemed to have been unaware, they co-operated and there's no good evidence it was deliberate. This is surely different from the much larger number Trump had, with good evidence he did so knowingly, hiding them when the government came to reclaim them, and waving them in front of people who aren't cleared whilst telling them they shouldn't see it. It is just barking mad to think there is meaningful equivalence there. But that is the absurd merry-go-round we're on, where legions of political operators and activists are engaged in obfuscation designed to blur useful boundaries between severe misconduct and minor error.
So Trump getting fined in a way nobody has ever been fined before and using a law in a manner it's never been used before ISN'T making up something?
You can apply that to like any rich person, that's the point.
I bet you people would be blowing your gasket if just say black people got ticketed for illegally parking. You have to apply laws equally to the population. I wonder why the governor of New York had to qualm fears from other business people concerning the Trump fraud case. If only Trump did this, then why are other people worried?
Are the mobsters the opposing political party while also having to make up new ways to apply laws to catch them?
LMAO, still running with the narrative that they were peaceful. Taking over a whole part of a city for nearly a month is peaceful...
I didn't even live in a major city and they brought out the national guard at Walmart and blocked several store entrances and expressway on/off ramps, but the "protests" were mostly peaceful, mental fucking gymnastics.
I haven't really followed the Hunter Biden stuff but it was more valid investigation than the Trump/Russia Collusion that was a lie the whole time. At least the Hunter Biden laptop existed and it was a thing (that the left tried to say was a conspiracy theory). Trump/Russia Collusion was the conspiracy theory.
So in an interesting aside, part of the reason Trump stock is rising/plummeting is this thread case specifically. Traders are gambling on whether or not Trump will sell stock to pay his fines.
www.newsweek.com
So the word on the street is that Traders basically are gambling right now that Trump uses his board power to give him self access to sell all his stock which will essentially kill it.
Trump has been blasting social media trying to promote the stock, but other than his core maga farm, nobody is buying it. In a way you can argue that it's a sign at least on wall street that the odds aren't looking good for him on his civil cases. Somebody could correct me but I believe if he does get re-elected he can kill the federal indictments by simply directing the DOJ to kill it, but he can't do anything about the state cases.
Trump stock soars after bond reduction
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. jumped ahead of the first day of trading its newly merged company with Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.
www.newsweek.com
So the word on the street is that Traders basically are gambling right now that Trump uses his board power to give him self access to sell all his stock which will essentially kill it.
Trump has been blasting social media trying to promote the stock, but other than his core maga farm, nobody is buying it. In a way you can argue that it's a sign at least on wall street that the odds aren't looking good for him on his civil cases. Somebody could correct me but I believe if he does get re-elected he can kill the federal indictments by simply directing the DOJ to kill it, but he can't do anything about the state cases.
Volumes of stock changing are indeed very low - that's part of the reason for volatility. Trump's stake is I think about 60%. So at current values he could cash out for $3 billion. But it's very hard to believe anyone's going to pay that much if a significant volume needed to be sold (such as a major shareholder cashing out), which would require proper investor money.
Honestly, I would be surprised if Trump could even get the NY fraud bond of $170 million in the long run if he tried selling up. I certainly hope he doesn't, because the more I look at it the more I think TMTG is a dirty scheme to rip off the gullible. It's just painful to watch someone scam people in plain sight, but if people are willing to be scammed...
This is more or less literally an excuse right-wingers use for Jan 6 - that antifa/law enforcement/"glowies" mixed in the crowd to intentionally stir the pot and engage in/encourage others to engage in crime. It's bullshit there, too.
This is such a bullshit measure, and it's specifically because there's no standard unit of what a "protest" is, so if you need a smaller percentage of protests to turn violent you can just subdivide almost arbitrarily. A couple dozen people spent a couple days on the steps of my state's capitol - that's one protest. CHAZ/CHOP, that's also one protest. The whole claim is built on using lots of smaller, generally peaceful protests as a sort of cover for the ones that got ugly (and were generally the bigger protests in the larger cities), combined with trying to basically just claim anyone doing violence wasn't "really" a protester.
To put it another way, if you have access to the data that number came from, how many protests happened in Minneapolis during the first two days of protests? Because in that time frame we have our first confirmed homicide (and arson) by someone who was definitely a protester.
Or to come at it from another direction, I could easily argue that Jan 6 was almost entirely peaceful. So long as I get to count all right-wing election protests nation-wide on Jan 6 and slice what counts as a protest in basically any reasonable way. Hell, if I'm allowed to count the Stop the Steal rally, the march to the capitol steps and the actual attack on the Capitol as separate protests I can argue that events on Jan 6 in DC were "mostly peaceful" (at least three protests, only one involving violence). Which is obviously bullshit, but it's not only obviously bullshit when applied to right wingers.
I imagine the plan is to try to con/salesman his followers into buying the stock at an inflated price as soon as he's allowed to sell it. Or to give people who want a hypothetical future president to owe them something another way to transfer
Except for the bit where the boogalooboys, opportunists, and provocuers got arrested and prosecuted due to, you know, actually existing and doing crimes more serious than "breaking curfew"
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There weren't that many non-DC Jan 6 protests, and several of them had breaking and entering/violence
33%, which is very high actually, and involves literally all of the same people marching down the same road to the same destination
So yeah, you can argue it, but don't blame me too harshly for thinking it's a very flimsy argument
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