Letitia James ready to seize some of Donald Trump’s assets
Letitia James told ABC news that she would look to take some of Donald Trump’s assets if he’s not able to pay the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling. Engoron ruled that Trump lied about his wealth and rendered judgement accordingly. Consequently, Trump owes New York nearly $454 million dollars. For each day that this bill is not paid, it does up by $87,502.
From AP News:
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump could be at risk of losing some of his prized properties if he can’t pay his staggering New York civil fraud penalty. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454 million — and the amount is going up $87,502 each day until he pays.
New York Attorney General Letitia James told ABC News on Tuesday that she will seek to seize some of the former president’s assets if he’s unable to cover the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling.
Engoron concluded that Trump lied for years about his wealth as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to appeal.
“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James, a Democrat, said in an interview with ABC reporter Aaron Katersky.
Trump’s ability to pay his mounting legal debts is increasingly murky after back-to-back courtroom losses. In January, a jury ordered him to pay $83.3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump claimed last year that he has about $400 million in cash — reserves that would get eaten up by his court penalties. The rest of his net worth, which he says is several billion dollars, is tied up in golf courses, skyscrapers and other properties, along with investments and other holdings.
AP News provides additional information here.
Category: 2024 Election, Donald Trump
I guess we will see how the board will vote today. I am pretty sure they will approve the listing to the NASDAQ. And then suddenly Trump will have billions of more dollars… on paper. Getting cash out of the paper is going to be the tricky part.
I am not sure how the margin loans work on a new offering That’s probably between the brokerage account holder and him.
Even if he has the cash, he may not want to spend it on that.
This entire thing scares me to death. I don’t recognize my country anymore.
It’s absolutely fucking sickening to watch.
Yep. The Howler Monkeys have turned us into a Banana Republic. If TPTB can go after Trump this way, what will the do to the average citizen. Sadly, control of We, The People is their ultimate goal. The Bad Orange Man was just in the way.
No, we will not (((VOTE))) our way out of this.
Prepare
That is the thing the left never realized in their own personal echo chambers. By unfairly prosecuting Trump, they made him into one of the underclasses.
The worst thing that could have done to him was ignored him. He probably would have withered away if that had happened. But weaponizing the justice system and trying to stomp him out they turned him nto a folk hero of anybody who’s ever been mistreated or felt mistreated by the system.
In effect, they proved beyond reasonable doubt that our system has tiers and if you are not on the list you have to stand behind the ropes.
And we call this “Justice”.
Debtors prison is coming back the way the dems are going.
Serfdom
Out of curiosity, what parts do you find so wrong?
I’m asking in good faith, and welcome corrections. My understanding (from various sources, but not reading the legal ruling) is that the dollar value was the sum of various things, such as ~$170M in savings he got on loans by misrepresenting his finances. Even if the banks made money there, which is a defense claim, it’s still illegal. Fraud is fraud.. If I misrepresent the value of my business to get a favorable bank loan,… I’d be in deep shit.
The other things I admittedly don’t understand, but that one, yeah, if he saved $170M from fraud, I tend to think he should be held liable for that amount, plus interest. Is that not reasonable? And I’d feel the exact same if the defendant’s name was Joseph Biden, too. That is justice.
Maybe another question is, do you think this isn’t ‘justice’ because you feel Trump didn’t commit fraud, or that he did commit fraud but they’re singling him out?
If you knew what “fraud” is legally, you would know the essential elements we all have to learn in law school. They are (1) an intentionally false misrepresentation of material fact; (2) made with the intention to deceive another; (3) that causes actual damages to the person to whom it was made; and (4) that person or entity must have justifiably relied upon the truth of this representation to his, her, or its detriment. The lenders could not have had detrimental reliance because they all did their own due diligence, and all the loan applications had a value disclaimer clause. Moreover, there is no victim of the so-called “fraud.” If you said Trump’s loans were fraud on a bar exam you would flunk.
It is also significant that the subject statute has never been applied to anyone else in this situation, ever. In fact, the NY Governor had to come out and tell the business community that this treatment was only for Trump, so they wouldn’t worry they were next in the barrel for government extortion.
Trump presented his estimated value as X. The lending agency said your value is Y. They agreed upon a term somewhere between X and Y, and the loan was secured. The loan was paid off. On time. Both parties were satisfied. No fraud, no crime. The loan agency that was supposedly the aggrieved party testified in Trump’s defense. They also stated that they would do business wwith him again.
So you tell me where the fraud was, where was the crime.
Per this article, the bank ‘assumed that the representations of the assets and liabilities were broadly accurate‘:
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-letitia-james-fraud-new-york-364d1052f98816121000c26dc66f3878
Now, should the bank have done its own assessment? Maybe, I genuinely don’t know how this stuff works. I’m inclined to guess he was given a lot of leeway due to his public persona and various assets. I also could certainly see anyone from a bank giving a diplomatic answer so as not to ostracize a potential future POTUS who holds grudges.
At the end of the day, if -just for example- I used a false pretext to get a ton of money from a bank, flew to Vegas, placed it all on a table, and doubled it, then gave the bank its loan back, with interest,… should I be free of any fraud charges? After all, everyone made money, no harm done, etc.? Or is there still fraud there?
I’m inclined to think the latter, and even if the bank had a responsibility to catch my fraud, I’m still the one who committed it, no?
Straw man much? I am thinking no, because that is a transparently pathetic example of one. My kids could do better when they were nine. Of course they were smart. At least they grew out of it.
That article is bullshit. No bank on a multimillion-dollar loan “assumes such representations are even “broadly accurate” (whatever that means). Moreover, the loan app documents contained a disclaimer clauses drafted by attorneys, telling the lender they were relying on their own assessments of values.
I’m gonna toss a flag on that whole “bank assumed” thing. Ronald Reagan didn’t invent “Trust, but Verify”. Banks did. Banks that assume go under.
Hack Stone is not a disbarred “lawer”, nor does he play one on the internet, but this is just like any other transaction. A seller says that the product is worth X amount of money, the seller believes that it is worth Y amount of money. They negotiate to a mutual value, otherwise either party can walk away from the deal. It happens in purchasing a car, a home, or a business. Do you believe that the lending institution took Donald Trump on the value of the property, or did they have their own financial experts do an audit to determine what they believe it was worth? Hack Stone would hope that it was the latter, because if they took the stated value from borrowers they would have been out of business a long time ago.
Now regarding the aggrieved party, if the State of New York believes that Donald Trump defrauded the lending institution, why don’t the fines go to the bank?
Shockingly enough you are headed down the right path.
I will make it real easy for you. Please cite another case where someone else in New York:
A person borrowed money over-stating their real property business assets as collateral assets improperly
Borrowed the money
Paid it all back with interest
Got drug into court and fined over a million dollars.
I’ll wait. Should be dozens of them right? Or are you saying nobody else ever did that?
Oh wut? You say you can’t find a single one? Really? No shit? Surely it is a thing right?
If you understand that much then you might have a clue as to why this prosecution was perceived as unfair.
Burn it down for the insurance money 😉
Nobody will insure Letitia James …
You misspelled scrunt. FIFY.
So if Trump refuses to vacate the building, will he be protected under NYC’s “squatter’s rights” legislation? Will Letitia be arrested if she forces him out an changes the locks? My inner E4 Mafia (if they existed) brain and barracks lawer skills wonder.
A SWAT team will be dispatched. Anybody found residing there illegally will be arrested and held without bail for inciting insurrection until after the election.
New York Real Estate Developers: If you dragged Donald Trump into court and railroaded him on trumped up charges (no pun intended), what is to stop you from taking us to court saying that we overvalued our assets? We would be idiots to risk investing in New York if you can charge us.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul: Don’t worry, we are only going to pursue Donald Trump, your investments are safe.
Nice to see them openly state that not everyone faces the same justice system in America. The verdict should have been thrown out on her statement alone.
And while we are at it, why aren’t the Feds investigating Atlanta District Attorney Fanni Willis for admitting in court that she diverted campaign funds for personal expenses when she (allegedly) paid her boyfriend back? And the IRS needs to look into his personal expenses on his corporate business card.
Agreed, but they’re all on the same team. It would take someone, or several someone’s, to have the cajones to blow the whistle. I’m sure there is info out there to be shared that would be somebody’s mic drop.
In some jurisdictions, the owner of real property is allowed to testify in court to his or her opinion as to the value of the subject property. These cases say that is reliable evidence of value. That being so, and every lender or insurer conducts its own assessment of value, how can this case be anything other than a sham.
The problem here is the credibility of the claims were on trial.
If you think this a legitimate case, then you should be prosecuted if you ever refinanced your house and stated a value larger than what the lender determined in its lowball appraisal. Many of us have also experienced appraisals where the “appraiser” did a windshield appraisal. Should those borrowers be prosecuted because they reported their opinion of a higher value? Riddle me this, who were the victims of his fraud? “Credibility” of what claims?
The bank don’t GAF what I say. The bank won’t lend me less than the appraiser says it is worth. I am also not a corporation declaring assets.
I don’t know enough about the case to say if it is legitimate. Given the totality of circumstances (timing, venue, those involved, etc) It seems highly suspect to me. That isn’t the point though.
I guess they would lend me less, certainly not more though.
A product only has value if someone else is willing to pay what you believe it is worth. Plenty of people sitting on a golden investment of tens of thousands dollars that they spent on Beanie Babies. Problem is nobody wants to pay what the idiot collectors paid for them.
As for Hack Stone, he invested wisely. He cashed out his 401K from his gig as Director of Media Relations for a proud but humble woman owned business and sunk it all into limited edition Franklin Mint Commemorative Plates.
The guys loaning the money were happy with the claims and said they’d do it again.
True enough. That wasn’t the point though.
Because it’s true, there is no “point”.
No, the point they were trying to make was that Trump isn’t trustworthy. The problem they ran into was that literally nobody believed them. The harder they went, the less believers they had.
“They” is who? The prosecutor? Their only point is they don’t want Trump in the Oval Office and will create crimes out of whole cloth to keep him out.
Actually, it is the point. The banks do not believe that they were defrauded. If they were defrauded, why would they continue doing business with him?
What these people fail to either see or realize is that pendulums swing both ways. And plenty of people have put themselves out there, ripe for the pickings, when it swings the other way. I for one, will care not 1 bit when it does, nor who gets caught up in it.
They have gotten themselves all worked up, just waiting for their “happy ending”. I hope they stay dissatisfied.
What information led the presiding judge to determine the value of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to be $18,000,000? Per the attached link, Forbes Magazine gave it a worth of $160,000,000. He must have consulted the 51 Intelligence Officials who said that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2022/08/09/trump-mar-lago-florida-beach-club-worth-what-its-like-inside-photos/6639497002/#
Not quite. Forbes estimated the value in 2022 to be $350M.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2022/08/09/how-much-has-trump-made-from-mar-a-lago-his-palm-beach-estate-under-siege/?sh=786550165bed
But more on all that. He didn’t pay much for it.
Trump pulled some hi-jinks and then:
In 2023 dollars $10M would be $26M. He did extensive renovations though adding lots of square footage and facilities. He also turned it into a profitable business.
Who are you going to believe, real estate investors who move hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate every year, or a judge 👩⚖️ n New York City who can’t a barber in the tri-state area who could trim his eyebrows?
But your question was; “What information led the presiding judge to determine the value of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to be $18,000,000?”
Just because the tax assessment value used by the judge may have lowballed the value of Mar-a-Lago, doesn’t necessarily mean Trump used a fair valuation for Mar-a-Lago for his loans. Trump claimed $500M which is really high. However $18M in insanely low. It means that the property is showing a 120% return on assets per annum.
Well, if Trump can be sued for overstating his properties value, can the judge, by the same token, be sued for undervalueing the property? Has anybody asked him yet where he learned real estate appraisal?
Isn’t the valuation due to the fact that it’s valued as a private club, vs a residence? It’s pretty damn clear that the property is indeed very valuable, but it’s also clear that Trump happily accepted the assessor’s valuations in prior years, since it led to a lower tax being assessed.
And I think that’s the whole thing – if you’re gladly accepting that its value is $18-$27M for over a decade, paying taxes on it at that rate, and then claim it’s worth hundreds of millions when applying for loans from banks.. well, that’s a fraudulent discrepancy.
Not a chance. The tax agency determines the value. If they get it wrong that can hardly be Trump’s fault. Trump has been claiming it’s worth hundreds of millions for at least a decade. If the tax office never paid attention that is their fault.
You two don’t seem to have ever paid property tax… Tax valuation and fair market value are not interchangable.
Really? Cite anything, literally anything I wrote that was incorrect.
Do you own property? Look at the county assessor’s tax valuation of your property. Compare that to the fair market value. There’s a huge difference.
Did you actually read anything I wrote?
I do. It’s not my fault that you don’t know the difference between property tax valuation and market value. I get an annual statement from my county assessor showing the current tax valuation of my property. That valuation is what my annual property tax bill is based on. Nothing else. It has no bearing on the market value of my property, the resale value, the replacement cost, or anything else. It’s roughly 40% of the market value of my property. It varies from state to state, county to county.
Correct. In most states, unless the property has been recently purchased, the assessed value is much lower than the present market value. In most refinancing loans, I doubt the lenders even bother to look at assessor’s values as the actual market value of the asset.
Correct. They don’t care about property tax assessments.
Assessor’s valuations are for tax purposes only and are generally far below market value. My own property valuation for tax purposes is slightly below 60% of the current market value. It’s not a fraudulent discrepancy. It’s apples and oranges.
Upon further review, it’s closer to 40%
“But your question was; “What information led the presiding judge to determine the value of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to be $18,000,000?””
Let me answer your question with a question: What are the judge’s qualifications to make any property valuation? My guess is he pulled that number out of his ass.
Your guess would be wrong then. He got it from tax records.
I’ll tell you what he pulled out of his ass: The amount of his bullshit judgment awarded to the state of New Yawk.
Again, that’s assessed value for property tax purposes. It is far below market value. They’re not the same thing and are not interchangeable.
No fucking shit. That is exactly what I wrote.
“Trump pulled some hi-jinks”.
And those hi-jinks were…
He bought the land between the house and the ocean and threatened to build a tall building there to obstruct the view. Keep in mind that this was after he offered, and was turned down a $20M offer five years earlier. He really wanted the property so he was never going to build there.
I’m not seeing the hi-jinks.
That is because you aren’t rich. You have to think like a rich person here.
Then draw me the picture.
No crayons, sorry.
Just don’t try to use the word bugaboo. 😜
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/maryland-us-rep-david-trone-apologizes-for-using-racial-slur-at-hearing-he-says-it-was-inadvertent/ar-BB1kmZqG
Apparently, some folks have confused it with the archaic, offensive slang term “jigaboo.” Bugaboo is not a racial slur. Apparently, the D-rat pol was attempting to say bugaboo and instead use the above J word. That won’t help him with the Black vote.
They won’t care they will vote for him anyway.
Just came across this,, and will leave it to those with legal backgrounds,, but damaged if this doesn’t sound familiar
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m9mGWTj5fOc&t=24s
Darn, not damaged.
Has anyone heard anything about Trump appealing the bogus verdict from the sham trial?
He has already filed a Notice of Appeal. But that does not stay enforcement of the judgment. Only a bond on appeal will do that. The required bond amount is about $500 million. Over 30 insurance companies that write appeal bonds have refused to issue the bond, unless Trump secures it with $500 million in cash deposits. Which sort of makes the bond pointless.
Trump claimed today that he does have the $500M.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-he-has-nearly-500m-cash-suggests-could-afford-bond-new-york-ag-case-slams-hack-judge
Of; food, water, security, money, medicine, elections, justice, logic and reason: they as a matter of our flaws require calculus, whether we/you/I accept it or not.
The tipping point approaches in where the majority, or an irate and tireless minority faction, see coefficients resolving any and all denominators to zero.
And then… (meme)
“Prepare.” (also, preemptive FY,L’the commie cuttlefish’T!)
Watch it, you. Chuck Norris can divide by zero!🤣
That’s the Government you get by electing DEI quotas!
To paraphrase Ice Cube, “[yester]day was a good day.” To quote Ray William Johnson, “Until…”
We’d just made the final payment on a property and picked up some cube steak for dinner when my wife decided to change the conversation from my future career plans yielding higher pay and increased retirement savings to gloating about Evil Drumpf’s dire straits. That’s always a good sign that the conversation will go downhill quick. I didn’t vote for Trump, or anyone for that matter, but view this whole charade as just that–a conspiratorial series of events to undermine, discredit, and ultimately criminalize DJT. She, on the other hand, voted against Trump for FJB, not because she liked the latter but because he’s not Orange Man Bad.
Anyway, I tried to objectively state that I don’t care much one way or the other. I liked Trump as President and want to see him get another term, but if it is proven that he has committed crimes or acted unethically, so be it. I just don’t see how, in our centuries of contentious politics and heated presidential elections, DJT is the first President to go from being a well-known and mostly beloved celebrity to the most hated President in history, being persecuted multiple times on both political and judicial fronts.
As usual, I was accused of always trying to defend Trump and his actions, while I eventually just deferred to my studies of history and how political leaders who are suddenly deposed, prosecuted, and imprisoned or executed are usually found (decades later) to have been the subject of intense propaganda and slander campaigns. Look no further than 1930s Germany or the Soviet Union for examples. I mentioned that our son, who did vote for Trump, may find out when he’s my age that this whole thing was just a targeted attack to protect the deep state and establishment. Or he may look back and realize that his mom was right.
BITCH WHERE’S MY SAMMICH 🙂
I try to keep it civil, but sometimes…😅
Unless he has no critical thinking skills, I don’t think he will decide “mom was right” about Trump. I have been watching what has happened around the world for over 60 years and studied history for most of them. I even used to be a Democrat, but after I watched it turn into an organization lead by a bunch of corruptocrats, I had to convert to reality. Trump is the first president in my adulthood who actually did or tried to do what he said he would when campaigning.
Reagan did. He couldn’t balance the budget because it wasn’t his to balance; but he did present a balanced budget to congress every year which was always DOA.
One year they even delivered it a hearse.
It’s funny, in a way, that the two most effective (in my opinion) Presidents over the past 60 years or so were originally celebrities. Reagan, the classic Hollywood star, and Trump, the modern reality TV star.
Our checks and balances are a good thing in many ways, but sometimes I wish that the President had the power to just sign a check. Imagine if Trump’s wall would have been fully funded. I don’t think we’d see as many illegals as we do now.
On a side note, here in my little corner of Louisiana (not a border state, but bordering a border state), we’ve been getting more and more Spanish-speaking customers who lack any form of US identification. They love looking at the guns for some reason, and I’ve heard that some judges and politicians want to allow illegals to buy firearms. You know, because we don’t want to violate “their” 2A rights. I sense a grand scheme to arm the illegals and use the resulting crime to push for more gun control. Eventually, all of us–citizen and illegal alike–will be permitted to store our over-under shotguns at a government supervised shooting club. Problem is…illegals. Not that it matters to Leftists, but letting criminals buy guns and then banning those same guns will only result in disarming the law-abiding. I, for one, am willing to be declared a criminal for continuing to own property already paid for and [once] legally owned.
I don’t disagree that Reagan was an excellent president. He was another one the media and left constantly attacked.
I lived in the DC area during most of the Reagan years. The Post would slap him on the front page a lot. They did their best to catch him with his mouth open. For years I thought that the WP had the most incompetent photographers on the planet because they couldn’t get a picture of the President with his mouth closed.
I agree. I’m sure most of us can attest to this, but we don’t always have to see eye to eye with our spouses. My wife and I have been together for nearly 27 years, having raised five kids, but we’ve largely led separate lives while I served, with me being a geographical bachelor with significant time around more conservative people while she was the caretaker for her parents. It was stressful, she was in a bubble, and even while I spent the last couple of years of Trump’s presidency dealing with the real-world events in DC, as part of the JTF HQ, she got lost in the mire of the MSM. Funny how those 2020 TDS sufferers like Cuomo, Lemon, and Stelter found themselves suddenly jobless when their usefulness was played out…
I’ve been around a bit less time than you, but my earliest memories were of Reagan in his first term. His successors have gotten increasingly worse over the decades, until Trump came along and showed that, with support from Congress, campaign promises, and an “America First” attitude can be pulled off.
They’re coming for your assets next, y’all know that, right?
Prepare
https://tldavis.substack.com/p/complacent-about-replacement?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=700076&post_id=142811860&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=agepv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Well, of course… from “squatter’s rights” to tax lien sales, it’s clear that the ultimate goal is to ensure the common man (or woman) owns no property. Better that wealthy individuals, large corporations, and of course our masters who hold political offices own the lands, while we peasants cough up rent and thank them for their generosity.
I rented places for most of my time in the Army, from a $385/month apartment in Hopkinsville, KY to a sub-$700 loft apartment in Columbus, GA, to a $500-something little peach-colored trailer at Happy Acres in Hinesville, GA. I also lived in a 90-year-old shotgun shack in Pembroke, GA for a year or so. Those rent prices weren’t too bad, though the BAH was not much more. My longest assignments without deployments were in NOVA. First time around, I paid $940/mo., which increased to $1140/mo. over four years for an apartment with MS-13 graffiti all around. Second time around, it was four years in a nice house in Stafford, paying over $1800/mo. Doing the math, the landlords got rich over the years, even as I wasted money on properties I never got any return on…
Fortunately, I stopped paying rent in my second year of law school. The mortgage payment on that first house was only $245 per month, that was back in 1977.
Too bad this is a political site
Did you know in March of 1971 Black Sabbath’s second studio album Paranoid reached number 12 just 2 months after release with very little radio air play?
Don’t wear boots, brs. Don’t wear boots:
Awww, somebody gonna have the Saaaddzzz…
https://centurylink.net/news/read/article/the_associated_press-trump_could_learn_monday_how_ny_wants_to_collect_4-ap?sc_cid=webmailpo