New York Attorney General Tish James' wide-ranging civil lawsuit against the former president, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children accuses them of fraud and misrepresentation. She's also making a criminal referral to the Feds.
metmike: Is this politically motivated?
Very Likely.
However, if you don't want to give your enemies legit ammo to use against you, then don't commit fraud and break laws with expected impunity!
One can make a legit case that justice being applied unfairly because of politics but not that Trump not be held accountable for his actions.
so lets boil this down in lay man's term and take the one sided political angle out of the equation. A guy applies for a loan. The financial institution asks for estimates of value of assets. The financial institution has experts who verify estimates of the value of assets. They can either agree with your estimate or disagree and come up with their own estimate. They make the loan. Where is the victim and where is the crime?....well of course unless your name is Trump
this is NOT about fraud. this is about 2 things... trying to convince some indepedents, and some republicans to be negative on trump. (so he has less support for an election in a couple years). and also trying to distract him with other things that will impede his ability to run in an election.
here is the issue... if i tell the local tax agency that my property is only worth 10 grand. but they say it is worth 300 grand... i did not commit fraud. we both get lawyers, and hash it out, or let a judge decide. same with a loan.
if i tell citibank i want a loan, and my property is worth 5 million, they can be dumb, and just give me 5 mill. that is not fraud. that is just the bank being stupid. this is part of what happened over 10 years ago in the housing market. it is the job of the bank to go out and appraise my property to see how much they are willing to loan. they have to do their due diligence. they are FREE to say, NO, your property is only worth 100 grand, so we will not loan you 5 million.
i did have this problem with the county almost 20 years ago. i put up a modest barn. they claimed my property value went up by 150 grand. (so they were going to drastically increase my tax bill). i had to hire a private realty appraiser to write up a report with values, and comps. after fighting with the county, they agreed to increase my property value by only 30 grand. but NO, i did not commit fraud by giving a lower value than what the county had claimed.
again, this is NOT about fraud. some people just want to go after trump on one thing after another, after another. they want to hurt his ability to run for office again.
there are so many other serious crime problems in NYC, they should not be wasting time, and manpower, going after trump.