Donald Trump has been indicted four times heading into the 2024 election. It’s a political circus, though the case involving the alleged mishandling of classified materials is probably the strongest of the four, especially since Yuscil Tavares, who served as director of information technology for the former president, recanted his testimony after hiring new attorneys unaffiliated with Trump’s political action committee. Tavares now claims there was a concerted effort to tamper with evidence, including the erasure of surveillance tapes. The longest trial could be the Georgia 2020 election probe, a RICO case involving Trump and over a dozen others, including Rudy Giuliani.
But the lawsuit against him from New York Attorney General Letitia James is another annoyance in the litigious assault on the former president. However, there is a fatal flaw in the case, which even CNN had to point out. You might have heard that Trump might have inflated his assets (via Associated Press):
Donald Trump defended his real estate empire and his presidency in a face-to-face clash with the New York attorney general suing him for fraud, testifying at a closed-door grilling in April that his company is flush with cash — and claiming he saved “millions of lives” by deterring nuclear war when he was president.
Trump, in testimony made public Wednesday, said it was a “terrible thing” that Attorney General Letitia James was suing him over claims he made on annual financial statements about his net worth and the value of his skyscrapers, golf courses and other assets.
Trump’s lawyers released Trump’s 479-page deposition transcript in a flurry of court filings ahead of a Sept. 22 hearing where a judge could resolve part or all of the lawsuit before it goes to trial in October. James said evidence shows Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by up to 39%, or more than $2 billion, in some years.
James said last month that her office is ready to prosecute the Trump family for fraud, but who are the victims? That’s a rather key part of this legal action that appears to be missing (via Daily Caller):
CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig laid out his biggest problem with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ suit against former President Donald Trump on Thursday morning.
[…]
“This is a big case, it’s a big civil case involving hundreds of millions of dollars. But it’s also the fifth most important case Trump is facing right now after the four criminal cases,” Honig told host Phil Mattingly. “That deposition is really interesting. Trump argues, ‘Because of the Trump name, I could have even claimed it was double or triple the value.’ There’s no question he inflated the assets.”
“But the problem with the case is no one really got defrauded because the banks on the other end, the banks who were making those lines, they decided we’re going to make these loans and they got repaid with interest and they made profits,” Honig continued. “That’s why it wasn’t charged criminally. Technically, is it fraud, yes, but you don’t have a victim, which make it is less appealing as a criminal case.”
So, James has crap. What else is new here?