THE GRIFTED AGE

The hammer finally came down this morning, when New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Donald Trump, his children, and company over his business practices, accusing him of running a ten year long fraud scheme that covered his entire time in office. (The only reason it’s not for his entire fraudulent life is due to the Statute of Limitations)

The suit had its inception in the testimony of his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, before a congressional committee in which Cohen explained how Trump inflated and deflated the value of his properties, depending on which action made him the most money or better enabled him to finagle bank loans. Kudos to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who asked the questions that elicited this information from Cohen.

The AG is seeking a $250 million penalty from Trump, and asking the Manhattan state court to “permanently bar” Trump and three of his children from serving as corporate officers or directors in New York state, ever again. The suit alleges the frauds were “approved at the highest levels of the Trump Organization - including by Mr. Trump himself... These acts of fraud and misrepresentation grossly inflated Mr. Trump’s personal net worth as reported in the Statements by billions of dollars.

Trump is accused of committing the fraud to secure favorable loan agreements from banks, and to reduce his tax payments.

James said in a footnote in the lawsuit that her office is referring her findings to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The IRS will be very interested in this, and he should tremble at the thought of how they will come for him.

The lawsuit runs through a detailed accounting of 200 instances of business, bank, and tax fraud from Trump, Ivanka Trump, Don Jr., Eric, and the Trump Organization.

Over the course of the three-year investigation, the Office of the Attorney General found that between 2011-2021, “Mr. Trump’s statements were fraudulent and misleading in both their composition and their presentation.” Trump made known through CFO Allan Weisselberg that he wanted his net worth on his statements to increase every year and his net worth was fraudulently inflated by billions of dollars year after year.

All told, Trump, his children, the Trump Organization derived more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets for the 11 statements covering 2011 through 2021. Each statement represented that the values were prepared by Trump and others at the Trump Organization in consultation with “professionals.” However, no outside professionals were retained to prepare any of the asset valuations for the statements. “To the extent Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization received any advice from outside professionals that had any bearing on how to approach valuing the assets, they routinely ignored or contradicted such advice.”

One of the most glaring examples cited in the lawsuit involves the inflated valuation of his apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan. From the lawsuit:

“Between 2011 and 2015, the value of Mr. Trump’s triplex incorporated into the Statements of Financial Condition increased by more than 400 percent - from $80 million to $327 million. The bulk of this fraudulently inflated value came from the misrepresentation in the years 2012 through 2016 that the apartment was 30,000 square feet, when in reality the apartment was only 10,996 square feet. That wildly overstated size was then multiplied by an unreasonable price per square foot.”

The charges display Trump as almost pathetic in his psychotic neediness. He wanted it known not only that his apartment was worth more than it was, but also that it was bigger than it was. It was of the greatest importance to him to be known to be wealthier than he actually was, not merely to make negotiating loans easier, but also to be The Donald Trump, the one who lived on Page Six, in People magazine, and in his own head. Let’s not forget that in his accounting, Trump Tower has three more floors than it actually does.

Trump valued Mar-a-Lago at $739 million. Its real market value was closer to $75 million.

A group of rent-stabilized apartments in one of his building were valued at $50 million. Their total value was $750,000.

The example of the Deutsche Bank financing for his building in Chicago and his resort in Doral, Florida is stunning. Deutsche Bank became Trump’s go-to lender after all the other major banks refused to touch him, finally realizing that he would frequently refuse to repay loan agreements in full. Even with Deutsche Bank, Trump submitted financial statements with misleading entries, resulting in millions of dollars in credits flowing to him and his companies. This was in part due to Trump providing a “personal guarantee” for the loans, which were secured on his net worth, for which the records backing that up were fraudulent as well.

In addition to the major frauds, the schemes include small-time swindles like the scam involving memberships at his Westchester golf club. A valuation he submitted claimed members would pay $200,000 each for unsold memberships. In fact, many members were offered free memberships, and Trump “specifically directed club employees to reduce or eliminate the initiation fees to boost membership numbers.”

Another scheme involved Trump claiming he owned cash that he did not. In one statement, he claimed that money either held in escrow or held by a business in which he owned a minority stake “belonged” to him.

“Claiming money you do not have does not amount to the Art of the Deal, it’s the Art of the Steal,” James said at a Wednesday press conference. “The complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us.”

If the court approves the remedies sought, the Trump Organization will likely be annihilated the way Trump University and the Trump Foundation were.

Altogether, the allegations are stunning. Even for those who have known for years what a crook he was as he spent decades pursuing fraudulent business practices, the suit outlines in detail how Trump built and maintained a national business empire based on fraud throughout that likely goes back to the beginning.

For those who hope this will be “the event that finishes him,” that is unlikely. But make no mistake, this is a gutting not only of Trump’s entire business career, but also of his fundamental public identity. His celebrity relied upon his image as a financial genius. He would never have played the “business genius” on The Apprentice otherwise. What James presented on Wednesday is the truth that Trump is and always has been - as described by the professor at Wharton whose class he was allowed to audit - “the dumbest fucking student who ever walked into my classroom.” His entire career is now revealed as based on fraud and deceit rivaling those of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff.

In the public court of celebrity, this is damning. The persona he sold to the American people, the persona that led him, however improbably, into the leadership of the most dangerous political movement in this country since the establishment of the Confederate States of America, is literally hot air. Those Trump balloons flown at rallies during the 2020 election were more accurate portrayals of the truth than his most dedicated detractors could have imagined.

And yet, those crowds at his rallies will still raise their arms in Qanon salute to “the most persecuted man in America,” the man who suffers this persecution “because of all I do for you.”

In horror movies, the monster always has to be killed three times. This is Number One. Election Fraud in Georgia and theft of government documents could be Two and Three.

After which we blow him out the airlock.

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