New York Attorney General Letitia James, who seems to be virtually salivating at the prospect of seizing former President Donald Trump’s assets, may rue the day she brought her civil fraud case against him: Her action – launched because she’s a partisan Democrat who opposes him, and almost certainly conducted in the hope and belief it would damage Trump as a political candidate – may well end up sending him back to the White House.
James infamously campaigned for office in 2018 on a promise to go after Trump – “I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn,” she said on the campaign trail.
Like Andrey Vyshinsky – Stalin’s procurator general, who oversaw the criminal trials of the Great Purge, and has been cited as the source of the fabled prosecutor’s assertion, “Give me a man and I will find the crime” – James had her target, and simply needed to find the crime.
That concept is offensive to the rule of law.
Further, despite the fact that when she was elected, he was serving as the president of the United States, she wasted no time searching for a crime she could hang around Trump’s neck. After all, while campaigning for the job in 2018, she had said, “I believe that the President of the United States can be indicted for criminal offenses.” She had a campaign promise to keep, no matter what the long-standing policy of the federal Department of Justice may have been.
It took her three years to figure out what case to bring, but, eventually, James had her charge – civil fraud, in a case where no bank that lent money to Trump did anything other than make profits off its loans to Trump. As The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, “There was no real financial victim.”
But that was all right, because the law James chose to use to go after Trump required no finding that anyone had been injured. She merely had to prove to a judge’s satisfaction that Trump had committed fraud.
Consequently, the money that the judge ordered Trump to pay will go to the state, not to any alleged victim. Since there’s no victim, the judgment is not meant to compensate any alleged victim for money fraudulently taken; instead, the judgment is meant to punish Trump and remove as much money as possible from his assets, so as to reduce his ability to contribute to his own campaign for president.
So, if there was no real financial victim, how did the court arrive at the stupendous amount of $354 million as the proper amount to fine Trump, once the court had found him guilty? Simple. The court accepted James’ figures for how much his fraud had “earned” him in “ill-gotten gains” – and then levied that amount as his fine, so as to “disgorge” him of the “improperly” taken booty.
And don’t forget the interest – already pegged at another $110 million, and increasing by another $112,000 per day! – which began accruing before Trump was even found guilty.
Yes, you read that right. Judge Engoron ruled that the interest Trump owes on roughly half of the total penalty amount – related to savings Trump was given on loans he received – can be calculated from the beginning of the investigation. That was in 2019.
It’s galling enough that Trump has been ordered to pay a huge fine that includes interest that began accruing on the day the state launched its investigation. What’s even worse is that the fine and the interest are so large they may effectively deny him his right to appeal – because in order to appeal the verdict, he is required to post a bond in the amount of the outstanding balance. And the kinds of companies that regularly offer such bonds don’t typically accept as collateral for a loan of that magnitude the kinds of assets that make up the vast bulk of his wealth – real estate. Consequently, Trump’s attorneys told the judge earlier this week that they have been unable to secure a bond.
Trump may have to sell off one or more of his iconic properties, likely at fire sale prices, just to be able to post a bond to allow him to appeal the verdict against him – that is, he may have to sell off property that he most likely wouldn’t be able to recover, even after a successful appeal, just to be able to enjoy the protections of the due process that is supposed to be one of the hallmarks of the American legal system.
So, Trump “owes” $464 million to the state of New York, for taking out loans from banks that were perfectly willing to loan money to him after doing their own due diligence on the value of the properties involved in the transactions, and then paying back the loans with enough interest that the banks made a tidy profit – good enough that they were willing to continue doing business with him.
That’s absurd. And it’s outrageous.
It’s election interference. It’s a deliberate attempt by a partisan actor to abuse the powers of her office to hurt a political opponent, while simultaneously stripping that political opponent of a huge amount of cash that he could use to fund his own campaign for the presidency.
It’s also overkill. And just as the ridiculous criminal cases launched against Trump have failed to convince Republican primary voters not to support him, the James case against Trump – launched, no doubt, for political purposes – will fail. This case may, in fact, be so over the top that it pushes some voters out of the “Biden” and “undecided” columns and into the Trump camp, cementing a Trump return to the White House despite Letitia James’ fondest hopes. And she will have no one to blame but herself.
Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.