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The snarky remark would be that presidential corruption is not culture war, but Tuesday.
I have seen precious few people arguing here against the proposition that Trump is obviously leveraging the opportunities of office to enrich himself, his family, his legacy as a president and close allies. I think his apologists here would rather argue that prior politicians were not less corrupt, but only less obviously corrupt (for the most part, excepting Biden's pardons here), or that he is entitled to loot the treasury after his opponents tried to go after his money through lawfare, or that he is still better than a non-corrupt leftist for unrelated reasons.
Let’s accept for the sake of argument that Donald Trump was targeted by the federal government or agents within the federal government. (This is my position.) What does a “non-corrupt” settlement look like? Money is typically what’s awarded to victims in such cases. This is not a hypothetical or meant in a sarcastic spirit: I believe that Trump and conservatives have been targeted by the federal government over the last decade, so what’s the alternative mechanism here that would make them whole that would not be labeled corrupt? Is there one? If you can imagine one I’d like to hear it. Because to me it seems that to believe that Trump was targeted makes this settlement a priori not corrupt. Unless you can envision some other settlement that threads this needle.
In this specific case, we have to look at the statute that was violated. It calls for either actual damages or statutory damages of $1,000 per disclosure. Since the latter would only get him $36,000 or thereabouts, he obviously wants to go for the former (the complaint asks for both, however the statutory damage claim relies on a theory that it's a separate violation for everyone who saw the records, a theory that the Supreme Court has previously rejected). This is rarely done in the real cases, and is especially difficult here, since it's difficult to assign an amount certain to the losses. A fact pattern where actual damages would be proven would be if a guy owns a business, it's leaked to customers that the IRS is investigating the business, and there's an obvious dropoff in earnings following the disclosure. This is where things get really difficult for Trump, since in a properly adversarial proceeding you wouldn't discuss settlement until after discovery is substantially complete.
I've settled a lot of cases and most economic damage claims are pretty straightforward. Assuming you have medical/repair bills, a normal salary, and a condition that prevents you from working. More speculative damages are a fucking mess. I have a case that's been going on forever where a guy is claiming damages from a business that he and his brother were going to start but couldn't because of his injury. The Plaintiff was deposed for 9 days, the brother for 17 days, another brother and the elderly mother were deposed, we deposed the brother's sketchy, unlicensed accountant/business advisor. The Plaintiff produced a business analysis document he had prepared before the suit. The defense hired their own economic expert to refute the report, which was hearsay anyway because it wasn't prepared for preparation and he can't produce a rep from the company that produced it. The case was filed in 2013; I took it over in 2023 and it's currently listed to go to trial in September but it's been on many trial lists and I would be shocked if it doesn't get removed again.
Now take a guy like Trump whose wheelings and dealings are a lot more complicated than a guy who wanted to open a fucking gas station and subject his finances to this kind of scrutiny. Considering that the leaked tax returns showed he had been claiming business losses for decades, proof of actual damages would likely require that he was losing even more money after the disclosures, unless he could point to a deal worth a certain amount that got cancelled or something like that. In other words, all of the sensitive financial information that Trump didn't want to disclose to begin with would now be at issue, along with information from years that weren't disclosed. If you don't think this is fair, keep in mind that the defense wouldn't be trying to get this information from him; they would just as soon not see it entered into evidence. He would have to submit it voluntarily and put himself up for deposition or the court would just dismiss the damage claim for lack of evidence. Assuming he can prove actual damages, punitive damages are a possibility in this case, though it's hard to estimate what they would be. (It's a matter of dispute, for complicated reasons, whether punitive damages would be available if the plaintiff were only able to prove statutory damages).
So what's it worth? Assuming a pre-discovery settlement, spitballing based on the assumption that discovery is going to be long and costly and unlikely to prove anything definitive, and that a jury is going to be unwilling to give Trump (who isn't exactly doing badly) more money than they would to a personal injury plaintiff who suffered serious damages, I'd probably throw 3 million out there and see what their counteroffer is. If it's something in the ballpark, say 10 million or under, I'd start negotiating. But anything more than that and I'd ask counsel if he had a case management order in mind or if he wants me to make a proposal first. I don't think there's any way Trump sticks with this if he actually has to go through with litigation. I don't think there's any way Trump is going to be able to prove that he's anywhere close to 1.8 billion dollars poorer because of these disclosures.
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I am tempted to say that they could dismiss the case without prejudice; sign a tolling agreement; and let Trump re-file after he leaves office. They could even mutually agree on a venue which is middle of the road in terms of red/blue.
The issue I see is that TDS is just so intense and pervasive. Ok, it's a bit "boo outgroup," but my sense is that the Left is perfectly willing to demonstrate in front of judges' houses; to identify and intimidate jurors; to socially ostracize decision makers who don't make the decisions they want; etc. Which makes it very hard for Trump to get a fair trial.
TDS is made up, the real TDS is the prion conservatives caught when Rush limbaug's earthly remains drifted heavenwards from the incinerator as his soul fell straight to hell, that tells them people not liking someone who goes out of their way to be unlikable, people thinking an open fraudster and convicted felon might do more fraud and more felonies, thinking an open liar might tell lies, is some sort of social contagion that they are above.
You can't separate the fact that people hate the dude from the fact that he deserves to be hated. The due ran a fraudulent charity, and one of the things the fraud money bought was a self portrait! That is hallmark movie villain shit!
You can note that lots of other people deserve to be hated, and for some reason the people who hate this guy often love those other people with zero reservations.
Wow, that sounds really bad. I assume this was one of the felonies he was convicted of, right?
Consider his peers:
A serial rapist who burned a few dozen women and children alive on national TV in a botched propaganda stunt.
a dry-drunk who lied the nation into multiple pointless, fruitless, ruinous wars, resulting in more than a million dead, the devastation of multiple entire countries, and the foreclosure of the nation's economic future.
A guy who directly and intentionally armed drug cartels in a bid to more effectively undermine the constitution, resulting in numerous murders of innocent civilians.
A senile kleptocrat who had innocent civilians murdered in an attempt to intimidate the public into surrendering their human rights.
...But those guys are just fine, because the problem is hallmark movie villainy, not multiple rapes and murders and massacres and whole nations turned into killing fields.
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I actually don't mind this result. As far as Trump's corruption goes, this is more or less justifiable.
What I cannot accept is his behavior to enrich himself and his family through crypto scams and pay to play, even going so far as to pardon clear-cut criminals because they donated to his campaign. That stuff boils my blood. He used to say 'drain the swamp' but seems to have pivoted to 'become the swamp'.
Dude’s a billionaire reality TV real estate agent. How did he ever convince people that he wasn’t the swamp?
He ran on being a part of the swamp and therefore knowing more than anyone how to deal with it.
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Because he talks like common sense grandpa ("crime is bad, kill our enemies, etc) instead of like a focus-grouped actor wearing a Normal Human skinsuit.
Plus the swamp went on a 10 year long unhinged berserker rage about him, which is great for credibility in that regard.
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He doesn't look, act or talk like swamp, and the swamp hates him with an open and visceral hatred. It's a fair deduction. It's also the reason nobody else could compete - any potential contender gets hailed by pundits and immediately it taints them in the eyes of the anti-swamp crowd.
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There are some limited tools to have a moderately adversarial hearing on this sort of topic (eg, some of the cy pres abuses at least involved companies pretending to not want to plea guilty even if the terms were incredibly favorable for the claimed conduct), and some that have pretenses of adversarial hearings (eg, the ‘totally independent’ racial and environmental NGOs the Obama and Biden admin didn’t protest too much). I doubt these would quite the typical Dem or NeverTrumper, but they’d be less overtly partisan to centrists or the politically ignorant.
Of course, the obvious follow-up question is whether those options actually work, here. The absence of any non-partisan adjudicators, or of any even-handed partisans, does not make the odds look good, never mind certain, even where the facts are clear. If neither Vullo nor Palin can fly, appeals to fair courts are a loser.
But this still stinks.
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