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So, my debut post. I've been lurking here for some time and I have decided to experiment with some public posting.
The culture war issue on my mind is the federal prosecution of NY State AG Letitia James. A summary, from my perspective:
She more or less campaigned for office with "Get Trump!" as one of her campaign promises.
Upon taking office, she and her team went through some of Trump's deals for the purpose of looking for grounds to pursue a claim against him.
She and her team discovered that in one of his real estate deals, he had supplied arguably exaggerated figures for property he had used as collateral for a loan.
The State of New York sued Trump in the general trial court making use of a consumer fraud statute which, until then, had been mainly used against businesses that take advantage of individual consumers (i.e. not deals between sophisticated businesses). This consumer fraud statute did not require proof of damages, which was helpful to the AG's efforts since Trump and his organization had paid the loan back in full and with interest.
The trial court awarded a judgment against Trump for hundreds of millions of dollars, a judgment which was later reversed on appeal.
This lawsuit had been one of numerous other "Get Trump!" legal activities, civil and criminal, in multiple jurisdictions.
After Trump was re-elected, a Trump loyalist with access to federal home loan files went through Letitia James' files and discovered arguable fraudulent statements in her mortgage applications for certain properties. Letitia James was referred for possible prosecution and ultimately indicted for bank fraud.
Normally in situations like this, the mortgage applicant is not prosecuted. Rather, they are required to pay the higher interest rates which would would have been required had the application been completed accurately.
Personally, my reaction to this series of events is one of satisfaction. I was outraged by the lawfare campaign against Trump and it seemed to me that AG James activities were an abuse of her office. The prosecution of James strikes me as a reasonable tit-for-tat, necessary to deter the Blue Tribe from future abuses. The most charitable interpretation I can think of with respect to these lawsuits is that they are a form of "Nazi punching," i.e. the idea that if you are dealing with genocidal psychopaths, it's reasonable to oppose them By Any Means Necessary. But of course, as others have pointed out here, when you combine (1) it's okay to punch Nazis; and (2) my out-group are, generally speaking, led by Nazis, the net result falls somewhere between "counterproductive" and "civil war."
What's also interesting to me is that for the most part, the media coverage has downplayed points 1-6 from above even to the extent of completely ignoring them in certain cases, giving the impression that Trump is just gratuitously using the justice system to target his political enemies. (Yes, this is the "boo outgroup" part of my post.)
So this brings me to my main question: What will happen next? Given that the Blue Tribe members (apparently) feel that they are the victims of a vicious unprovoked lawfare attack, will they decide to retaliate at the next opportunity? Are we about to enter an era where every outgoing president preemptively pardons himself and all of his associates; conservative businessmen with political aspirations avoid contact with New York and California; and liberal businessmen similarly avoid Florida and Texas? Probably this is an exaggeration, but I would guess that the Blue Tribe is thirsty for revenge and I could easily see this lawfare business escalating.
A secondary question: Perhaps, much like the mainstream media, I am omitting important context from my summary. Are there additional facts I should consider which would (or should) change the way I see this lawfare business? In one article I read (I think it was the New York Times) the point was made that the fraud alleged against Trump was much bigger than that alleged against Letitia James. But to me, this does not seem like an important distinction because the key similarity is that in both cases, it seems that the authorities chose a target for political reasons and then went looking for arguable wrongdoing by that person. (As opposed to starting with the wrongdoing and then looking to see who was responsible.)
It's a bad precedent, but it isn't Trump's precedent. Turnabout is fair play and so far nothing I've seen from Trump rises to the level of what his enemies have already done to him personally.
Yeah, I remember that during his first campaign, he made a suggestion/promise that if he was elected, Hillary Clinton would be prosecuted. At the time, I was a little disappointed that he didn't follow through. But now I see that was the correct move, even assuming for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton had some skeletons in her closet (which is probably a pretty good assumption).
It's just not good to have a situation where each party, upon getting into power, starts prosecuting the leadership of the other party. It's better for the country as a whole to let politicians get away with crimes than to have this kind of back and forth.
I'm of two minds on this - I agree with you that there needs to be a level of immunity, but we also have an incredibly badly behaved political class.
I guess I tend to be a lot more on the side of "If it's something you can explain in 10 words or less, and everyone would agree about how severe it is, prosecute them - if it's something that requires detailed technical expertise to understand, then you probably need to let it slide." Under this standard:
To be fair, in general I prefer that our criminal system work that way - I remember someone said something like "The only real crimes are those you could explain to the founding fathers", and I kind of agree with that system; I think we have too many things that are either crimes or technically-not-crimes due to weird arcane loopholes that make intuition kind of useless, and the whole system relies on prosecutorial discretion to avoid everyone being in jail forever (which is another way of saying "If the people in power don't like you, you're going to jail").
Agree in principle, but 'storing classified information incorrectly' is almost always prosecuted, is relatively simple to understand, and is quite a serious offense (although that part might not be well understood by lay people).
The reason it's always prosecuted is because the seriousness is impossible to determine. The whole point of properly controlling classified information is so that we know who has access to it and are aware when it's lost. But if you store it improperly, even if there's no evidence that a bad actor or foreign state accessed that information, you have to assume that they did access it, because the controls that would tell you it was accessed are not in place. In other words, every piece of information on Hillary's server must be assumed to be in the hands of our enemies. Her case is exceptionally egregious because her team wiped the server, so the nation doesn't even know what information was on there that was potentially leaked.
I think she should have been prosecuted. The violation is clear, significant, and deliberate, making this case far far more severe than the average. She was let off for political reasons, and because she's well connected, and I believe that is morally and also practically wrong, and is a large part of the reason why citizens don't trust the system to protect their interests. It's a clear failure of the system of law in the country when well-connected people are immune from the consequences of their misdeeds.
If you are talking about the e-mail server case, the official reason why she wasn't prosecuted (and presumably the real reason why Trump didn't try to prosecute her after taking office) was the difficulty of proving that it was deliberate.
The private server was supposed to be for unclassified e-mail only (including SBU material and material subject to mandatory record retention laws that should have been held on official government servers). Hillary used the proper secure systems for most of her classified comms. Over the four years she was Secretary of State, there were a few hundred e-mails on the server that should have been classified Confidential, including a single-digit number that actually had been classified Confidential and marked as such, a few dozen that should have been classified Secret (none of which actually were) and two that should have been classified Top Secret.
It isn't clear if mishandling Confidential information is a crime or not. (The criminal laws relate to the actual threat to national security, not to the level of protective marking, and most Confidential information is not that sensitive). And it is pretty hard to prove that the mishandling of Secret and Top Secret material was "willful" if it involves a small number of e-mails which should have been marked classified but were not.
what's the required level of "intent" under the mishandling statute being discussed?
Let's look at Comey's statement or the FBI report. Hmm, Comey finds that Hillary Clinton's handling was "extremely careless." Odd phase in this context. I wonder why he picked it.
During the later OIG investigation, the investigators reviewed various draft's of Comey's statements. A key change was from "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless." Why do you think Comey and the FBI went with this change?
Probably because the required level of intent is gross negligence and Comey's statement, absent that top-level edit, is essentially 'Yes, Hillary Clinton committed the crime described in the statute because her intentional plan to at the very least circumvent disclosure laws which necessarily would implicate at least communications about classified information did rise to the level of gross negligence which is specifically described in the law as being illegal, however, no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges for this crime we acknowledge she likely committed.' This statement, a more honest one, sort of gives away what you're trying to hide. Not to mention, another problem is prosecutors have indeed brought charges against people relying on the lower level of intent of gross negligence.
Whoopsie. Now there may be other reasons no "reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges, like the worry they'd end up committing suicide by shooting themselves 11 times in the back, but it sure as shit not because Clinton was only "extremely careless" which is totally different from "grossly negligent." Not to mention a bunch of other edits made by Comey from the original draft prepared for him in order to downplay the breadth of Clinton's misbehavior.
On a side note, I always encourage others to read the OIG reports about these controversies; they always have some of the best facts and rather odd conclusions. Many times they'll weave a narrative of facts to basically accuse the FBI and others of political cover-up or some other corruption scheme, but then step back and let the reader make their own conclusions, and the report is filed away in some basement somewhere and forgotten about.
How is classified information determined in court cases? Is it the mark on the paper, whether something should or shouldn't be classified even if unmarked, whether it was classified at the time of mishandling or at some later point, or is it something else?
We'll leave aside for now the fact the FBI didn't examine the server, didn't seize the emails, and relied on a private vendor to send them a copy of both, or the fact Clinton's team was engaged in a coordinated conspiracy to illegally delete and cover-up the entire ordeal which the DOJ gave general immunity agreements (something near underheard of in federal prosecution) in return for interviews which the FBI agents there noted were just full of lies (lies violate and rescind immunity grants). Even after all this nonsense, the FBI still had to admit Clinton had many dozens of emails with classified information in them, and many more discussing classified information in them.
Huh? It is completely clear that "mishandling confidential information" is a crime if the mishandling rises to the level of gross negligence. Are you arguing it's an element of the mishandling statutes being discussed to prove "the actual threat to national security" as opposed to typically being used in the charging decisions?
Whether any particular set of facts rises to the level of "gross negligence" is what may be unclear, but not whether or not mishandling classified information in a grossly negligent manner is a crime or not because it is. Even the rosiest view in favor of Clinton is still plenty to determine gross negligence.
Let's compare this to your comments about mortgage fraud and donald trump with respect to his statements of financial condition (SFCs). You don't note most of Trump's statements over the decade+ and dozens of commercial transations, loan applications, insurance filings, etc, were not false. Instead, you focuse on the minority of statements which you claim are false, misleading, fraud. In that case, you're completely comfortable that a minority of behavior can establish a pattern of fraud for Trump, but for Clinton it's important to note "most" of her classified communications were fine. Why the different treatment?
looks like basic who/whom
After all, the murderer doesn't murder 99.99999% of the time. Why are you focusing on my honorable, family-man friend who maybe perhaps unfortunately murdered someone when it's only .00001% of his behavior? However, let's talk about my enemy the murderer who killed someone.
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If I'm not mistaken, Trump was accused of something similar -- taking classified materials out of the White House. Do you agree he should have been prosecuted for this?
At the risk of being partisan, it does seem like there's a difference between the President (the highest authority) taking work home with him, and a department head setting up a secret unauthorised server apparently explicitly for the purpose of doing things without oversight. I would say that what Biden and Trump did was broadly on the same level, with Clinton being much more egregious than either.
I agree, but I think you see my point. Prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her apparent wrongdoing would invite retaliation in the form of prosecuting Republican officials for taking documents home. Arguments along the lines of "what he did wasn't anywhere near as bad" would be seen as partisan hackery.
(Of course Trump was prosecuted anyway, but hopefully the Democrats will re-think their lawfare tactics going forward).
As much as I hate to say it, this whole experience has led me to the conclusion that former high level government officials should enjoy gentleman's immunity, i.e. they shouldn't be prosecuted for wrongdoing in office unless there is strong bi-partisan consensus.
Using personal communication methods for government business is a widespread problem. Several members of Trump's cabinet did similar.
In Trump's case, he was asked on May 6th, 2021 to return classified documents. The raid happened on Aug 8, 2022. Trump wasn't being changed for his insecure practices. He was being charged for allegedly spending a year and a half actively stonewalling the government trying to recover all of the documents.
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I think one thing that could prove true is that, after some soul-searching, liberals will realize the legal pursuits against Trump emboldened his movement and gave it the life it needed for his re-election.
For the longest time, Trump claimed that everyone was out to get him and that he was being persecuted. Even after the impeachments and January 6, I never really bought it. Mitch McConnell said that “former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one” (criminal justice system or civil litigation). Biden’s DOJ had the only legitimate path for ‘lawfare’ and totally blew it. They had their big chance for like a year. He was dead in the water in 2022, paying something like $100 million a month in legal bills.
Then the civil suits and various trials all popped up within a year of the election and felt pretty hand-wavy. Even his felony conviction was unprecedented in legal theory, breaking federal election law at the state level by paying Stormy Daniels. Then his company gets put under conservatorship and every other day you’d hear about a 500 million dollar judgement. If not for winning the election, he’d have serious legal troubles to this day.
I was upset enough on the day of his indictment that I—along with a lot of others—contributed to his campaign. I believe Kamala has said something to the effect that some of this was counterproductive.
While there will never be another president quite like Trump, I have to believe they now understand how it all looked. For all the talk about Trump breaking norms, it’s got to be cognitive dissonance to (1) think “lock her up” in 2016 was a dangerous remark, and then (2) nine years later, campaign on throwing the former president in jail for whatever you can get him on.
I think it’ll be a live and let live thing. They tried this gambit and it did NOT work. It did not poll well for Kamala to say over and over how dangerous he was and laud her time as a prosecutor.
I would like to think so, but I see a couple issues. First, the Blue Tribe sees the prosecution of Letitia James as a baseless, unprovoked, unjustified abuse of the system. A lot of them will be thirsty for revenge.
Second, the Blue Tribe is composed of a lot of different people, many of whom are competing for status within their own circles. Who is going to win in their internal debates? Those who scream "Get Trump!!" the loudest? Or those who urge moderation?
I think there's a decent chance that cooler heads will prevail, but it's not obvious at all.
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Given that both sides eventually control the government and my assumption that mortgage fraud if this sort is endemic to the system, I suspect this specific method will come back to bite hard. There's a lot of low level functionaries on both sides who aren't paid well enough to not need mortgages. I highly doubt either side has checked finances to this level. This seems like it has substantial leopards ate my face potential.
This is why Letitia James must not only be brought down, but brought down in a sufficiently public and humiliating manner that her supporters and enablers internalize the lesson that running for AG on a platform of "screw the opposition" is going to blow back on you.
Same with Jay Jones of Virginia. A platform of "I want the opposition to die" is even worse.
I share @gattsuru's opinion on that one.
https://www.themotte.org/post/3359/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/381521?context=8#context
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The critical point you are ignoring is that Trump was guilty, but James appears to be innocent. The behaviour she has been indicted for is applying for a mortgage on the basis that the house on Peronne Avenue would be a secondary residence when she was in fact intending to rent it out. James claims that she allowed a family member to live in the house in exchange for a small contribution to utilities and maintenance, and that she accurately described her plans to the bank. If James is telling the truth, then no crime. The evidence that would allow me to determine who is telling the truth here is not public, but we do know that the career AUSAs assigned to prosecute the case declined to do so, and that the Trump-appointed US Attorney resigned rather than overruling them.
AFAIK, no President of the United States has previously ordered the malicious prosecution of someone they should have known was innocent.
As an entirely separate point, this is a problem. Primary residence fraud is not victimless - among other things it defeats the homeownership-promotion mission of Fannie and Freddie. But because it is almost never prosecuted it appears to be common.
Here are some excerpts from the indictment document:
So my first question to you is this: Do you accept that these are substantially accurate descriptions of the documents that James signed?
This raises a couple questions:
So in your view, it doesn't count as "renting" if you allow a family member to live in a property in exchange for a modest, below-market payment?
Do you normally assign a person's self-serving uncorroborated claims regarding their alleged wrongdoing enough credibility to conclude that the person "appears" to be or is "known" to be innocent?
Can you show us the documents that James signed?
Apparently, yes. Because apparently it's a standard form - the FNMA second home rider.
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The other point is that this was economically a second home transaction, not an investment - James's motives for buying the house and allowing her relative to live in it were personal and not commercial, and she was paying the mortgage out of her own resources, not the rent. The business reason for charging a higher interest rate on investment mortgages than second homes is that
The first of these is the key one - in the UK you get "second home" pricing on a mortgage if you can qualify based on non-rental income, regardless of who is occupying the property. This doesn't change the fact that James is guilty if she misrepresented her plans for occupancy, but it is relevant to the plausibility of her story that she was honest about what she was doing with the lender and they agreed to underwrite the loan as a second home anyway.
I tend to disagree with this. The documents apparently includes the following language:
It seems to me that allowing others to be the primary occupants of the house is not consistent with this language.
So if I understand you correctly, your argument is as follows:
A career prosecutor and a Trump appointee declined to pursue the case.
It follows that those officials determined that the case was meritless.
If the case is meritless, it's because there is corroborating evidence for James' claims about the intended use of the property.
Does that pretty much sum up your argument?
Also, I had a couple other questions:
Regarding Trump's alleged wrongdoing in the civil case against him, you said:
Are you able to identify 2 or 3 precedents for similar legal proceedings against ordinary citizens from the last 20 or 30 years?
Also, you said this:
Of these cases, which would you say was the most egregious case with the most unquestionable guilt? I am asking because I would like to look at it more carefully.
Not the OP, though I'll tag @MadMonzer, but I am an attorney and there are a few things here that we need to clear up. There are three categories of mortgages: Primary residence, second home, and investment. We can forget about primary residence since nobody is claiming that this was a primary residence. The question we are therefore dealing with is whether this is a second home or an investment property; there are no other categories available.
Primary residences get the most favorable treatment. Correspondingly, the most common type of mortgage occupancy fraud is mischaracterizing an investment property as a primary residence. Second homes carry higher interest rates than primary residences; if you fall on hard times you're going to prioritize keeping a roof over your head over making payments on the ski condo. Investment properties traditionally carried even higher interest rates (note the past tense) because, as investments, the borrower's ability to repay is often contingent on the success of the business. The disadvantage of the higher interest rates and down payments was offset by the ability to use projected income off the property to qualify for the loan. The risk to banks of mischaracterizing an investment property as a primary residence or second home was that the bank wouldn't be properly pricing in the additional risk profile of the borrower, who may be able to afford the property on paper but may in fact be relying on rental income to make the payments.
Keeping that in mind, there are two critical weaknesses to the prosecution's case. The first is that they have to prove that James knowingly and intentionally made a misrepresentation to bank officials. The only evidence they have of this is her signature on a boilerplate rider that was signed at the closing along with a sheaf of other documents. Anyone who has ever purchased a home, including the people who will be on the jury, knows that the documents you sign are selected by the bank based on their understanding of the situation. The borrower isn't drafting these things themself and presenting them to the bank as representations. They are simply memorializations of what is already understood. In other words, everyone on the jury is going to understand that the bank included that rider based on conversations they had with James regarding the use of the property.
If have read that the investigators uncovered witnesses who corroborate James's story that she was forthright about what she wanted to do with the property. Unless the prosecution can produce someone from the bank who is willing to testify otherwise, this case is dead in the water, and even if they do produce such a witness, it muddies the waters but doesn't necessarily mean there's enough to convict. One guy who doesn't remember something that five other people remember isn't going to move the needle much, unless that one guy was in a better position to know. I haven't been able to find details about this evidence, so tke this with a grain of salt, but assuming it does exist, it more or less ends the prosecution right there unless they have something big.
Even without this evidence, though, the case still isn't a slam dunk. Fraud is unusual in the criminal world in that the intent requirements are very specific, and honest mistake is a defense. If nothing was said about the use of the property other than the signed rider, and the decision to use that particular rider was entirely on James, she could credibly argue that she didn't represent the property as an investment property because it wasn't an investment property and was never intended to be. This is supported by the evidence, considering that her proceeds from the deal have thus far amounted to $1,300 in 2020 and nothing since.
But even going beyond that, if we assume that indeed she did intentionally make a misrepresentation to the bank, for it to be fraud that misrepresentation has to be material. Say you're buying a used car from a private seller. Certain things would be material to your decision to purchase: Age, mileage, accident history, repair history, etc. Suppose the seller claims he drove it cross-country last year and everything went well, and you found out later that this was a lie. He may have intentionally lied to you in order to mislead you into believing that the car was more reliable than he had any reason to believe it was, but if this statement didn't influence your decision to buy the car, there's no fraud. The upshot for James is that she doesn't even need witnesses to remember conversations from five years ago, only witnesses who will testify that if they had known about her true intentions at the time it wouldn't have changed anything.
There's another aspect to materiality that goes to a similar defense; while showing lack of financial benefit isn't a great defense in the sense that it doesn't negate an element of the offense, juries in general are unlikely to convict for fraud if the alleged perpetrator didn't benefit from the lie, or if the benefit was minimal. The two benefits one gets from classifying a property as a second home as opposed to an investment property are a reduced down payment requirement and reduced interest rates. The reduced down payment isn't a factor here because James put the same amount down as she would have on an investment property. The only possible motivating factor was the reduced interest rate. A representative for the bank told investigators that had the property been classified as an investment it would have increased the interest rate by a quarter point to a half point. One thing that hasn't been covered much, though, is how little money is involved. This house sold for $137,500. She put 20% down. Classifying it as an investment property would have cost James an extra $15–$30/month. These are not exactly the kinds of benefits one typically makes intentional misrepresentations over.
The Justice Department tried to dress this up as best they could and claimed that she defrauded the bank out of more than $17,000 over the 30-year life of the loan, but this is disingenuous. First, they didn't like the number the guy from the bank she actually used gave them, so they got another expert to testify to the grand jury that the rate increase would be closer to 0.8%. Then rather than use an average length that one would expect her to own the property, they assumed that she would live to age 92 and wouldn't sell, die, refinance, or pay off the mortgage in the meantime. They also assumed that a dollar in 2050 would be worth the same as a dollar in 2020; they should have applied a discount rate based on expected inflation.
All of that is before we even get to whether she violated the terms of the rider itself, which it is not clear that she did. The first thing the rider requires is "Borrower must occupy and use the Property as Borrower’s second home." Unfortunately, neither the rider nor the Federal mortgage regulations define any of the operative words including "occupy", "use", and "second home". A gander of the 1983 edition of Black's Law Dictionary in my office doesn't define "second home" but defines "occupy" and "use" in general terms suggesting some sort of control but without imposing any specific requirements that would be relevant here. Luckily, we can look at the rest of the language to get some clues as to what this means.
The next section states "Borrower will maintain exclusive control over the occupancy of the Property, including short-term rentals, and will not subject the Property to any timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or to any rental pool or agreement that requires Borrower either to rent the Property or give a management firm or any other person or entity any control over the occupancy or use of the Property". Now we're getting somewhere! I flesh this out in another comment, but if you've ever rented a vacation property, you probably haven't dealt with the owner directly. The way this is typically done is the owner enters a management contract with a rental company that handles the business end of things including marketing, payments, repairs, cleaning, booking, etc. in exchange for a hefty percentage of the rental price. They aren't going to enter such a contract without access to the most profitable days in peak season, so the owner's ability to use the property himself under these contracts is often limited to a couple selected weeks during the offseason.
A guy I went to law school with bought such a property near a lake that he let the group I was with stay in for free a couple times for bachelor parties. By "free" I mean that he charged us $500/night; he wasn't getting anything himself, but there was a minimum "friends and family" rate that the rental company required him to charge to cover the costs of having the house occupied. Everything was still handled through the rental company, even though we knew the owner. In other words, the type of occupancy the clause requires is more of a constructive occupancy than a physical presence. James did not delegate the rental of the property to a third party; any agreement she made was directly with the occupant. She had control over whether her grandniece could stay there. People elsewhere have mentioned that the occupant was subject to eviction laws, but this isn't dispositive. While eviction proceedings can be drawn out, the arrangement James had was a tenancy at suffarance under Virginia law (no written agreement, no rent paid), and the tenant was only due three days notice.
The relevant part of the clause concludes "Borrower will keep the Property available primarily as a residence for Borrower’s personal use and enjoyment for at least one year after the date of this Security Instrument...." Again, we have language that implies a requirement of control, not of actual possession. There is no requirement of any particular personal use, only that the property is kept available for such use. Aside from the minimal three day notice requirement mentioned above, there is nothing that would have precluded James from using the property while her grandniece was living there. When a landlord and tenant enter into a normal lease, the lease typically precludes the landlord from entering the property except in specific situations; he can come in if he needs to fix something, but not just to hang out. People living in the homes of relatives for free without written lease agreements do not enjoy these same privileges. Ask any 23-year-old who moved back in with his parents after college if he can limit their use of the property. Even if they spend most of the time at their condo in Myrtle Beach.
Even still, several witnesses told investigators that James did use the property when visiting family in Virginia, though she did not stay at the house overnight. Prosecutors seized on this as evidence that she did not occupy the property, but this is a rather specious argument. It's already ambiguous at best whether the language in the rider actually requires the borrower to be present on the property at all. But they want to read into the statute a requirement that a certain number of overnight stays are required. They also want to extend the damage period to the entire 30 year term of the mortgage, even though the restrictions are only in operation for one year, consistent with the idea that someone relying on rental income wouldn't be able to afford to wait a year before leasing the property. the $17,000+ they want to claim she defrauded the bank of goes down to $10,800 if you use the bank's actual high-end numbers, which goes down to $5,400 if you use the bank's actual low-end numbers, which goes down to $800 when you realize that they can only claim the first year of payments as damages (the math is goofy since the amortization schedules are front-loaded).
As for how this compares to Trump, he was charged with hundreds of instances of misstating property values to obtain favorable mortgage terms. Yes, there's some uncertainty with regard to valuations, but he did stuff like inflate square footage and factor in potential development that was prohibited by deed restrictions. And this wasn't a one-time occurrence but a pattern of behavior that went on over years. He saved hundreds of millions of dollars in interest fees. And with his organizations going into bankruptcy six times over the years, he wasn't exactly a low-risk borrower. The fact that he made intentional misrepresentations of material facts in order to achieve a significant financial benefit was undisputed, even by his supporters. The argument was simply that because he paid the money back, no harm, no foul. Well, notice that in the preceding 2,000 words I made no mention at all of the fact that James (presumably) paid the money back according to the terms of the loan. I don't even know if she did, because it isn't relevant. And neither is the fact that this isn't usually prosecuted, another typical Trump defense line.
One final thing I would caution. Remember how back at the beginning I said that the past tense was important? Well, that's because second home mortgages don't get preferable treatment anymore as compared to investment properties. It used to be that using a rental company was the only way to consistently guarantee short-term rental income, and their use was barred by the rider, and a contract with one significantly curtailed the owner's rights to control the property. Then Airbnb came along, and it quickly became relatively easy for the aspiring investor to get significant short-term rental income while maintaining control of the property. Since Airbnb doesn't really have to do anything other than act as a marketing platform and handle payments, they aren't going to insist on a great deal of control. If you only want to rent the place out for a few weeks in the shoulder months, that's okay. If you decide after the first rental that allowing strangers on your property isn't for you, that's okay. Listing your second home on Airbnb didn't violate any explicit prohibitions. But banks weren't stupid, and realized that the opportunity afforded by the short-term rental platforms greatly increased the number of people who were interested in "second homes". The upshot was that when it becomes hard to tell who is relying on rental income and who isn't, everyone pays the higher rates, and the advantage of a second home classification disappears.
If the prosecution's interpretation wins the day, the Democrats can easily take this ball and run with it. The practice of buying Airbnbs for investment purposes and getting second home mortgages on them was widespread between 2019 and 2022, when banks raised second home rates to curtail the practice. Such fraud was much more apparent and easy to prove than whatever it is they're accusing James of, and it shouldn't be too hard for FHFA to cross-reference a list of second home mortgages with a list of Republican donors from swing states and swing districts. You can argue that James's suit against Trump was politically motivated, but at least she had the courtesy to pick something that only a guy like Trump would be guilty of. Trump just gave a future Democratic administration license to run roughshod over a not-insignificant percentage of the donor base. Claim it's politically motivated. Claim a huge scandal. Fine. James is doing the same thing and it's getting her nowhere; only vindication that she didn't violate any actual laws will get her off the hook. My reaction to such a series of events would be one of satisfaction. If Republicans want to pretend that this is actually a Serious Crime that needs to be prosecuted, then their own tribe can pay the price for their indiscretions. The Republicans can feel free to do the same once they get back in power, except the statute of limitations will be up by that point on the period where misclassification made sense. I guess you can't win them all.
I was skeptical of these claims, so I looked up the statutes involved (18 USC Section 1344 and 18 USC Section 1014).
First, it seems that for both of these statutes, the applicable mens rea requirement is "knowingly" -- not "knowingly and intentionally"
Second, I searched for pattern jury instructions from the 4th Circuit. I found South Carolina (which is obviously not Virginia) but I doubt there's much of a difference. Here are some excerpts from the jury instructions:
https://www.scd.uscourts.gov/pji/patternjuryinstructions.pdf
Would you agree that these pattern jury instructions seem to contradict your claims, as an attorney?
I am curious about this, would you mind providing a link?
As a side note, I am really curious to see whether James claimed tax benefits as though the property were an investment property.
Perhaps, but if James visited sporadically while someone else lived there on a continual basis, that's not "available primarily as a residence for Borrower’s personal use and enjoyment" The house is primarily available for some other use, agreed?
Well do you agree that she received more favorable terms than she would have if the property had been categorized as an investment?
If by "license" you mean that future Democrats will feel justified in escalating further, then yes, that's a valid concern. Although in practice, I would imagine that they would primarily target leaders on the other side. But yeah, that's part of what was so troubling about James' activities. They invite reprisal, which invites further reprisal, and so on.
Agreed, although you can almost always find SOMETHING to use against someone.
Isn't that inherent to applying for a loan in the first place? It's not like the bank would extend an offer to you out of the blue.
I'm not an expert on this subject, but I tend to agree with you. Evidently, these bank fraud statutes are broadly written. Which is part of the reason these lawfare attacks are such a big potential problem.
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I'd suggest a possible alternative reason for why prosecutors might want to avoid prosecuting James regardless of the merit of the case: the standard that it establishes exposes them. James is a prosecutor. You're a prosecutor. James did politically motivated prosecutions of your boss. Your boss asks you to prosecute her in retaliation. What's gonna happen to you in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings? You've just walked directly in front of the crosshairs. In contrast, you know your boss' reputation, if you refuse he'll fire you, he might badmouth you a bit, but if you lay low and shut your mouth afterwards, he's not gonna come after you.
What do you think this is?
Democrats laughed and applauded when Barak Obama "joked" on late nite TV about sicing the FBI and IRS on his critics, and dismissed the scandal as a "nothingburger" when it was revealed that he wasn't joking.
While a lot of Trump's supporters wanted to see Clinton, Comey and a lot of other senior Democrats prosecuted, Trump notably did not do this in his first term.
Democrats subsequently elected Letitia James, in part, on the premise that politically motivated prosecutions are a good thing that America needs more of.
Letitia James and her defenders are like an adult dog that was never house broken. They are never going to learn that what they have done is wrong if you don't grab them by the scruff of the neck and shove their face in it.
The Democrats as a people need to be taught that politically motivated prosecutions are going to blow-back on them in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings, and that is what the Republicans are currently doing.
Yeah, but by asking them to be the instrument to teach this lesson, you're asking a lot personally from Republican-aligned prosecutors, you're asking them to make themselves a named, direct target for the next cycle. You're asking them to stand up to draw enemy fire. James probably felt safe because she thought that Trump would not come back and that the next Republican administration will want to distance themselves from Trump and so they wouldn't retaliate on his behalf. But I don't think any Republican-aligned prosecutor can feel quite so confident that the Democrats are not going to get back into power before this fades from memory, and that they will not be in a revanchist mood.
... there's a fun story from the criminal justice sphere, and by fun I mean incredibly depressing.
It's an old Freakanomics bit that drug dealers don't actually make that much money, but despite being in Freakonomics, it's actually true. The distribution agents and runners make peanuts, even mid-level dealers that handle a lot of cash end up spending a lot of that to replace stock, and you have to get real close to the top of the chain to break into high five figures or low six. Now, admittedly, that's tax-free and you don't have to deal with McDonald's customers, but there's a whole new level of problem when 'can't leave work at work' goes from late-night on-call to slightly more energetic concerns, whether from police or from other criminals.
Why would people accept a risk of 45 calibre wakeup calls for less than they could make sllepping fries ends up one of the big driving questions for criminology, and unfortunately there's a ton of different partially-right answers : lack of access to conventional employment, cycles of poverty, casual users making a little bit of money on the side, yada yada.
If you ask the actual people, though, a very common answer (especially once you get away from the casual users) is that they don't plan to stay at the entry-level. After all, it's not like the people at the top now have been there very long, and turnover for the mid-levels is often ridiculous. They're always hiring!
It seems stupid, from the outside view. They're jumping to get into the shoes of imprisoned (or dead) men, with at most vague motions about how they won't step into whatever trap got the immediate previous owner and not the thirty other previous owners. Maybe it is stupid.
They're still always hiring.
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This does indeed seem to be a plausible description of the thought process of these prosecutors.
If I, as a citizen, believe that this is in fact the calculus being performed by members of the executive branch, what conclusions should I draw?
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Trump 1 was plagued with people who didn't want to do what Trump said. He fought with Sessions trying to get him to do it and gave up after managing to get Sessions out. He said on Nov 2, 2017
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I agree that's a possibility. Another possibility is that the prosecutor simply thinks it's abuse of office to engage in politically-motivated retaliation. Even if the prosecution is in retaliation for something that itself was abusive.
Also, even if the prosecutor is not worried about being brought up on trumped-up charges down the road, he still might worry about damage to his reputation. It's very common for former federal prosecutors to end up with high-paying jobs at fancy law firms. Having been the person who prosecuted Letitia James would probably mean having to write off the possibility of future employment at 70-80% of BigLaw type firms. Perhaps more.
There's also the part where lawfare works better when the target of it actually commits a crime. It's admittedly early to tell, but Comey's trial might not go so well for the administration.
A prosecutor's job is to score a conviction. Imagine you're a prosecutor, and your boss tells you you're required to stand in front of a judge being berated because the point was just to harass a guy.
I'm not sure what your point is here. Are you confident that Letitia James has not committed any crimes?
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Note the slight of hand in paragraph 6 of the indictment that you quote, emphasis added:
I assume it is not in dispute that James did not use the property as a timeshare or other shared ownership arrangement. The critical text does not prohibit James from "renting" the property, it prohibits her from entering into an agreement that requires her to rent it (or to give another control over the occupancy or use of the property). James' behavior is only violation of that paragraph if she went beyond renting and entered into an agreement with her family member that required her to to rent to them or gave the that family member control over the occupancy or use of the property.
Of course, it's also not hard to look up the standard Fannie Mae Second Home Rider which provides, in relevant part:
Another way the renting may have been legal is if the lender agreed in writing to permit her renting.
I don't know what the specific rules in New York are like, but my home state draws a clear distinction between the "property owner" and the "legal occupant". The specific phrasing is different but it is very explicitly the legal occupant not the property owner who is considered to "have control over the occupancy or use of the property".
If New York State law follows the same general framework as mine, it is the act of accepting payment that transfers legal occupancy. I've even seen cases where this was a critical point of contention. If the landlord accepts any money goods or services from the tenant after informing the tenant that they were in violation of their lease that provision becomes effectively unenforceable because the tenant is still the legal occupant.
Technically the house in question is in Virginia, but I still see a distinction between the language and your description. I don't think James contests her was the legal occupant of the property, but it's not clear to me that being the legal is the same as having control over the occupancy or use. Like, the legal owner can presumably evict the legal occupant, right? Which would seem to entail control over occupancy. Downstream of that it seems like the property owner could also lawfully restrict the legal occupants use of the property. I've had rental agreements that prohibit using the rented property for commercial purposes, for example.
Not if they have accepted payment from the tenant. The landlord does not "have control over the occupancy or use of the property" the tenant does. Now the landlord can include provisions against X Y and Z, in the text of their contract/leasing agreement and cite a breach of that agreement (including failure to pay rent) as a reason for revoking the tenant's status as a legal occupant but that is hard to do without an agreement to point to.
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What are the squatter's rights laws like in that jurisdiction?
I don't think they apply in a case where the owner is aware of and consents to an individuals occupancy.
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It may or may not align with case law, but my first reaction to this statement is observing that most states have laws on the books controlling when and how landlords renting dwellings can re-establish control of unit occupancy and use. "I have to wait several months to evict my current tenants" seems to imply that someone else has "control over the occupancy or use of the property".
For the purposes of the law in question, the prohibition on giving a third part control over the user's occupancy goes hand in hand with the prohibition on agreements that require the property to be rented out. The big issue with the "second home as investment property" fraud was people buying beach houses and the like and saying that they're second homes when they're really investment properties. One of the surest signs of this is when they contract the business end out to a rental company that markets the property, arranges the rentals, collects the money, provides a cleaning service, and does all the other things that the true owner of a non-investment second home wouldn't do. The second home policy explicitly allows for leases, though, the idea being that an owner who occasionally used the property would also occasionally lease it out when they weren't there. If they're handling this business themselves, it's likely they're doing it in good faith. If they hire a management company to do it and are only guaranteed a week a year in the offseason for personal use, then it's almost certainly an investment property.
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I am also not familiar with the case law but I would be pretty surprised if the existence of tenant protections meant that every act of renting constituted an agreement that the renter had "control over the occupancy or use of the property." That would functionally make it impossible to rent any second homes issued with conforming loans in states with such protections, which I am skeptical is how this language is understood to operate.
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Thanks for pointing this out.
I would assume that as well.
Feel free to correct me, but it doesn't seem that James ever kept the property "primarily as a residence for Borrower's personal use and enjoyment" or ever intended to do so.
Yes, if she can produce such a writing, I would say that the case is on shaky ground at best.
i suspect such a thing is unlikely to appear because the lender is probably repackaging the mortgages to fannie mae (or something similar) and that likely violates the agreement between this third party and the lender. but it might be possible someone trying to bump their numbers gave a wink to James that she could do this.
Apparently, a blogger may have originally raised the problem with James's loan and he has a write up about the ongoing court case here: https://whitecollarfraud.com/2025/11/18/letitia-jamess-motion-to-dismiss-backfires-her-own-exhibit-proves-the-fraud-she-claims-doesnt-exist/
If nothing else, it seems like the sort of thing where the lender is unlikely to want to spend time and energy writing up something like this since it makes life more complicated. Besides, I'm pretty sure that the reality of the situation is that when people plan to rent out the property, they don't bother to seek written permission. Rather they, just sign the paperwork and then do whatever they want and nobody cares. (Eventually, if there is an audit, they might have to pay some extra interest retroactively or something.) Just as I am pretty confident that in Trump's situation, it's pretty normal for people to exaggerate when describing their collateral, the bank does an independent appraisal, and perhaps they adjust the loan terms as a result.
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With regards to your secondary question. The Democrats don't percieve their lawfare as unprovoked, at least not the rank-and-file and the voters. I remember during Trump's first term, there was a very strong sense in their mind that Trump is a criminal, that he was "getting away" with crime. First, he's wealthy; wealthy people are by default sinful, everyone knows that you can't get rich without stepping on poor people, probably with crime, and can only really get absolution by supporting Democrat pet causes. Apart from that, Trump was extra criminal, probably this was because they hadn't had to deal with a really adversarial presidency in a while, but from hearing Democrats talk it felt like them losing was somehow against the rules. That senate refused to go along with the impeachments really cemented that he was getting away with crime. And Jan 6 made them lose their mind in that regard; there must be some crime in there, look what they did! So even if they lacked anything specific to point at, going on fishing expeditions was justified in their mind.
What they really object to is Trump teaching the Republicans to do politics like Democrats. The Republican Party has its first tiny little riot in a hundred years, and the party of all-day-every-day rioting falls about hyperventilating about "insurrection".
Trump does normal, technically gray area stuff like have classified documents or pay off mistresses and it's a hundred felony counts. James gets grilled about mortgage fraud and it's the end of Democracy.
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Letitia James went after more than just Trump in a not-impartial manner, though. Her treatment of the NRA also raised lots of red flags, even if the dems find it hard to feel sorry for the victims.
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Letitia James actually is the one example where you can actually get prominent Democrats to admit that it may have been a bit much. I think because of the business element (not every Democrat is some rich-hating socialist, many actually have skin in the game) and the fact no one wants this to be the precedent set (that and going around talking about "getting" Trump)
I think this is partly hindsight. Anything from NY either didn't harm Trump or actively backfired and they can always tell themselves that the other cases were just, just slow or badly handled.
Fani Willis is corrupt and incompetent but, in comparison,I don't think most of the base thinks that Trump is innocent of trying to influence the election.
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Yes. And if they're justified in their minds, won't stop for anything less than being stopped, and see retaliation as just a reason to escalate further, the answer is as FCFromSSC often notes: war to the knife, until one side is totally defeated. Probably (contra FC) the right, which has already lost totally in several states and while it technically holds the elected branches of the Federal government, holds nothing else.
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Yes, now that you have reminded me, I would tend to agree with this. I remember hearing the phrase "our democracy" a lot. The idea was that the Blue Tribe was supposed to be running things; that they had a kind of Mandate of Heaven; and Trump was an usurper of the rightful order.
But any way you slice it, I don't dispute that the Blue Tribe perceived their lawfare attacks against Trump as totally legitimate and justified. I'm not sure if "unprovoked" is quite the right word, since (as far as I know) Trump et al had not engaged in that sort of lawfare previously. So you could say that they saw it as a legitimate and creative way to fight back, sort of like the tax evasion charges against Al Capone.
IIRC, there were two main points of contention.
First was the allegation that Trump was working with Russia, if not formally then in a "friendly nod" sort of way. There was the whole "Russia, if you're listening" comments which he claims was a joke but the left did not take as a joke.
Second was that Trump tried to have Hillary prosecuted but gave up after a drawn-out fight with Sessions that ended in his termination. Source 1. Source 2 (pdf page 319, page 107 of the report).
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From the anti-Trump perspective, the attempts to prosecute Trump were provoked by his committing crimes - they were not intended to be a tit-for-tat lawfare campaign. Letitia James' decision to prioritise bringing that particular civil fraud suit was motivated by animus, but the type of fraud Trump was charged with was something he was in fact guilty of (Trump's successful appeal was about the size of the fine, not guilt), and which you or I would be prosecuted for in the unlikely event that we (a) did it and (b) got caught. The federal and Georgia election-related cases and the documents case were prosecutions for egregious wrongdoing of which Trump was unquestionably guilty - any functioning justice system would have prosecuted in the absence of a clearly established immunity bar. I'm happy to admit that the Stormy Daniels false accounting case was basically pure lawfare - I think Trump was technically guilty, but it wouldn't have been prosecuted against someone who wasn't a political opponent.
I commend you on reading the 323 page opinion from the first appellate division (pdf). For everyone else, the only thing all 5 agreed on was the then $500m fine was vacated entirely based on 8th Amendment to the US Constitution grounds (this essentially stops any large fine amount on any subsequent appeals). There was no other majority holding. Only the unanimous decision to remove the penalty.
A majority of the 5 (3) wanted to overturn various parts (or all) of the case. Two of the 5 wanted to overturn various decisions by the clownish embarrassment Judge Engoron and for a new trial and one wanted to throw the entire case out.
Of the panel, only one judge is not up in the near future for a renewed political appointment. Without looking, which one do you think it was? The 2 who would affirm everything? The 2 who wanted a new trial? The 1 who wanted to throw the entire case out?
Oh yeah? Could you name a single person other than this particular case prosecuted in the last 100 years using s. 63 (12) the way it was against Trump, i.e.,
?
from just waving aside the statute of limitations restrictions to not using common law fraud statutes to requiring insane bonds and business closures to allowing some doofus political officer masquerading as a judge to oversee Trumps business for years-on-end to just ignoring broad disclaimer statements on all documents (among a long list of other ridiculous behavior)
or does no other business or person "overvalue" their property owned by a business for the purposes of getting a loan from a bank? or no one ever "get caught"? "overvaluing real estate" in the way the Trump org did to obtain loans from giant banks is completely common in NYC
the truth is the law in question, executive law s. 63(12), has never been used this way before and required unprecedented tenuous-at-best theory of liability to justify its use at all as a sort of prophylactic for a good business environment to fit within the vaguely worded statute
Not only would the state of New York not "prosecute" (remember, this is an equity action) some rando for similar behavior using this law and its novel legal theory, but the AG had to come out during a press conferences and calm other NY businesses implying this would only be used to go after Trump in this way. If you can think of a single case of this happening, you should send that example over to AG James so the next time the question comes up, one of her attorneys has an answer because they admitted to the appellate panel they had zero other examples of any case remotely similar, which Judge Friedman notes in his opinion (pg 221). His dissent is biting and excellent.
Really, I encourage everyone interested to read the arguments of the 5 judges in the appellate court decision. The 2 judges who would affirm everything but the monetary penalty make arguments which are clownish and incoherent at parts, asserting in one part of their opinion that using this law for the first time in history in this unique, unprecedented way basically saved the world from another 2008 financial crisis, an opinion so ridiculous it should signal the purpose of their legal arguments.
On the other hand, the well-supported accusations against Letitia James and the laws being used are garden variety mortgage fraud, which require no novel legal theories nor stretched laws applied uniquely at all.
Your characterizations of the NY case (and the Georgia case as well - and probably worse - but I'll leave that for another time), are ridiculous. This was a crap case torturing a vaguely worded statute in a way which which it was never meant to be used (and no one even thought it could be used this way) in order to political persecute a political opponent. That's it. And the fact it even went on is a complete embarrassment to the state of NY and the legal profession as a whole, a testament to how we are always merely a nation of men and laws are barely bumps in the road for motivated parties.
Apart from the trial judge and 4/5 appellate judges. The Higgitt/Rosado opinion agrees that executive law 63(12) applies - nothing in the text of the law says it only covers frauds against "little guys", that's just how it has historically been enforced. (It also agrees that if the facts found by Engoron are correct, the Trump Org defendants are guilty - the disagreement is about whether Engoron was allowed to make those factual findings at the summary judgement stage of proceedings).
You are technically correct here - if you or I misstated the square footage of an appartment by a factor of three, or valued a property subject to deed restrictions on the basis that it wasn't, and got caught (which is admittedly unlikely), then we would be facing a normal prosecution for mortgage fraud. I don't know why James used executive law 63(12) - I always assumed that as a civil forfeiture statute it allows a lower standard of proof than a criminal statute.
agreeing afterwards in a political charged case in a state ruled by one party (and which you require an upcoming reappointment to keep your seat) is not the same thing as "and no one even thought it could be used this way"
as Friedman notes applying "section 63(12) to a scenario to which that provision has never before been applied, or even thought to apply" and the the other opinions don't actually contradict this beyond saying they don't find a prohibition in the very broad plain language of the law (and then goes on to handwave away or ignore any previous decision in the state which restricted the usage of s. 69 (12) in the past, e.g., the requirement to show a concrete public interest)
this position should raise grave constitutional concerns because it is ripe for abuse, selective application, and targeting people for their constitutionally protected speech (see s. 69 (12) usage against Martin Shkrelli), and lacks a limiting factor, but don't worry because despite the defendants raising general constitutional concerns throughout the case and even in the appeal, they didn't raise this exact one specifically enough specifically on appeal therefore who cares, it's not preserved, and also law of the case doctrine precludes it anyway (after all, the court previously rejecting a motion to dismiss for lack of standing at the preliminary stage precludes the court from discussion appropriate statute interpretation which doesn't put the law in constitutional danger) so it's been decided anyway also this opinion is already 360+ pages (we'll just ignore how in other similar cases, neither of these things stops an appellate court from this analysis, especially in the context of statutory interpretation)
silly
again, this is an equity action
right, which is why you are unable to produce a single other similar example while simultaneously claiming this would of course be used this way against anyone else "if caught"
the fact that something hasn't over a very long period of time from its adoption to now been used in a way is good evidence that it wasn't meant to be used that way
this isn't novel or rare behavior and it's not hard to catch
that's a big "if" given a court opinion which entirely vacates the financial penalty and argues for reversal and new trial over an error on summary judgment on first cause of action which necessarily pollutes findings of facts and at least one element required in all the later causes of action - not to mention the opinion arguing the findings of fact and pattern of behavior rely on acts which are barred by the statute of limitations
the outcome of still joining in support of the liability finding given the actual written opinion is puzzling indeed, almost like the two judges who are soon up for renewal of their seats thought about other considerations when doing it
almost like the outcome is crafted to remove all the real penalties for the liability finding (various injunctions and sanctions, attorney penalties and sanctions, and financial penalties) as a compromise position to allow the liability to stand but the actual bite to be minimal
wow, how convenient "the law" worked out this way
well, no, because the Accounting Standards Board permits valuations based on long-term expectations, even very optimistic ones, for changes in usage or disagreement about restrictions
w/re to the apartment, the Trump org corrected that in 2017, after a Forbes article made the "lie" public, long before AG James began her persecution, and the Trump org claims this was an inadvertent oversight (in CFCs listing billions in assets) and the AG provided zero evidence whatsoever this wasn't inadvertent (not to mention, this was findable public knowledge with a minimum level of research since the 90s)
or the Supreme Court's finding that MarALago couldn't be used as a private residence despite it literally being currently used as a private residence (and had been used as a private residence open and notoriously for decades) without issue in support of the laughable "finding of fact" about its value
or its finding failing to list rent stabilized apartments was fraud because it was wrong for Trump to think they wouldn't be long-term (we'll just avoid the majority of the 12 rent stabilized apartments did indeed lose that status over the period of CFCs)
seeing a pattern here?
now, why didn't James just use one of these "lies," and criminally prosecute Trump? why did she and clown Engoron have to weave together a series of misleading statements, i.e., any statements which have “the capacity or tendency to deceive, or create[d] an atmosphere conducive to fraud”?
why not just use a garden variety fraud statute for all of these "lies" ?
you have such a confident theory of the case and its outcome; I find it strange you haven't the slightest clue why the case brought against the trump organization using this specific law in this specific way for the first time in history and not other garden-variety laws (like the ones being used against AG James) which you're now using to buttress your claim any rando would be prosecuted
except that's not was done to Trump and that's not the case against Trump or the Trump org
and Executive Law s. 69 (12) is not properly characterized as a "civil forfeiture statute"
there are other laws in NY which aren't criminal which could have been used; the reason those weren't used is because it was otherwise barred by lack of evidence, statute of limitations, inability to satisfy an element, higher burdens and showings which couldn't be satisfied, inability to connect it to Trump as opposed to his employees (among many other issues), and this law allowed broad power to engage in asinine behaviors to just attack and harm Trump, his family, and anyone connected to his businesses
perhaps I'm being unfair and I've only read a dozen or so of your posts fitting the category, but every time I read or respond to one of your posts characterizing a legal case involving Trump or another of your political opponents, it's hard to avoid the conclusion you know just enough about law generally, the specific law, and some of the facts to buttress your opinion that Trump (or similar bad political opponent of yours) is awful or whatever which you've crafted over iterations of arguing about it on the internet
is that right? or are you generally interested in law, work in law, read these opinions and not just distilled summaries by agenda driven partisans in the media?
in any case, this exchange exemplifies why I typically do not respond to comments like this; it takes far more effort on my part to respond to why your mischaracterizations are wrong, legally ignorant, and contain context-less "facts"
to which a typical response will be a short and sweet "but what about the Trump Tower apartment listed as 30,000 square feet which is obvious criminal fraud you would be put in jail over" implying that's, even if true, dispositive with the actual Trump legal case
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Thanks for posting this. One thing I would add is that the decision you cite is from an intermediate appellate court in New York. There is likely to be a further appeal.
Yeah, I am pretty sure the normal process is that (1) people overestimate the value of their collateral; (2) the lender independently appraises the collateral; and (3) nobody (other than Trump) is ever prosecuted or sued by the AG for fraud.
I asked a similar question but I doubt I am going to get an answer. In fact, I'm pretty confident that even flagrant fraud by borrowers is not prosecuted if their is no reliance on that fraud and no damages. So for example, suppose a guy applies for a $5m line of credit with a bank and claims that his salary is $1m per year. The bank is given full access to his tax returns which show that his income is only $600k per year. The loan is ultimately paid in full and on time. Has anyone ever been prosecuted (or sued by the AG) in such a situation? I doubt it.
Yeah, I am skeptical about his characterization of the other cases. I asked him so identify the strongest such case against Trump to avoid any accusations of cherry picking, but as of yet I have not received a response. I think it's pretty likely that his claims would not stand up to scrutiny.
This is something which is regularly brought up by 3 of the 5 judges. These are filthy rich, sophisticated parties negotiating at arm's length with lawyers on both sides of the deal. Each of the statements included broad disclaimers noting this is their opinion, it's not the result of an audit and is not above disagreement and encouraging the other party to do their own due diligence (which they did). The trial court clown Engoron and the 2 appellate judges just handwave this away.
And many of the findings of the court around the Trump organization's properties in question, e.g., MarALago, are completely ridiculous.
And in the context of real estate valuations which are notoriously subjective. If a person thought the value of their property was what they could immediately sell it for then I wouldn't currently own it. There are rampant examples, especially when talking about expensive or unique properties, which sit empty and "overpriced" for significant periods of time until a party comes along and pays the "overpriced" amount because they value it in similar ways to the owner.
there are other enforcement actions under the executive law and recently, but they're not in similar situations which matters because of the way the broadly worded law is written, what it was written for, and the purpose of its existence and broad authority
this was pure political persecution where AG James used the government to force a private business to open all their books and communications for the last decade+, combed through them (while leaking repeatedly to the press), and then crafted a ridiculous, tenuously supported case against a political opponent which she promised she was going to harm
AG James uses her position to harm political opponents through the process of being investigated. She issues endless demands for documents and interviews to people and organizations she doesn't like to harm them with famous examples being the NRA and VDARE. The law is no shield to her victims and instead is used to victimize them.
I find it hard to believe people defending this case or AG James are doing anything other than who/whom analysis and motivation.
Yeah, my general impression is that the people defending James could be characterized (at least in this thread) as "partisan hacks." i.e. the starting point of the analysis is that the Tribe must be defended at all costs and then they marshal whatever facts or argument they can to support that position.
In this thread, I've seen numerous arguments in defense of Letitia James which, as far as I can tell, do not stand up to even mild scrutiny. (For example the claim that anyone would be prosecuted (or sued) by the state over what Trump allegedly did.) It's hard to see why anyone would do this unless they had an "arguments as soldiers" mentality.
and whenever seriously pressed, they'll stop responding (or only respond with some short nitpick which is also regularly wrong and misleading) and then you'll see them at some later time attempting the same characterizations they now know are at best misleading and some will be even more confident in their posts
if I made a post and was corrected in any way, even if someone added in important context which changes how it should be interpreted by those who don't know the full picture, I would not show up to a board later attempting to pretend it never happened and I really struggle to believe a person who doesn't is acting in good faith
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I would have to disagree with that one based on my experience. Is anyone able to provide 2 or 3 precedents for similar legal proceedings against ordinary citizens from the last 20 or 30 years?
Of these cases, which would you say was the most egregious case with the most unquestionable guilt? I am asking because I would like to look at it more carefully.
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To be charitable to their position, they percieved Trump as breaking all sorts of norms. Mostly to do with decorum, as he offends what their aesthetic preference for what a president should be like, and they didn't feel like they would be to blame for breaking another norm in retaliation (the one against engaging in lawfare against the outgoing administration, which Trump upheld in his first term despite rhetoric to the contrary during the campaign).
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