More trouble for the Orange Jesus

[badlatitude]

Trump Lawyers CAUGHT ON CAMERA leaving meeting with DOJ at DC Federal Court - Meidas Touch​

Trump lawyers Evan Corcoran, John Rowley and Timothy Parlatore were spotted this afternoon at the DC federal courthouse. Federal Prosecutor Thomas Windom was present at the courthouse as well. While Corcoran, Rowley and Parlatore did not respond to questions from the press, Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Alemany reports that the attorneys were present in capacity representing Donald Trump regarding the January 6th investigation.

 

[Navig8tor]

I love Biden’s one reply to Putin’s nuclear blackmail: “Don’t”.

That is clever diplomacy, threatens nothing, promises nothing, leaves all the risk and guessing to Putin.

I am surprised that no one has challenged Trump to find out what is response would be?

Donnie wouldn’t have lifted a fat short finger to help UKR it was all about the quid pro quo, remember this is the same guy that thought Pooties move was genius.

 

[bridhb]

I love Biden’s one reply to Putin’s nuclear blackmail: “Don’t”.

That is clever diplomacy, threatens nothing, promises nothing, leaves all the risk and guessing to Putin.

I am surprised that no one has challenged Trump to find out what is response would be?

That is simple...Trump has already said something like "If I was president, Putin never would have invaded Ukraine".

 

[Remodel]

The last sentence is true. Do you tell your municipality what the value of your property is for real estate tax purposes?

In a sense, yes. It's true that the tax assessor assigns a value for tax purposes, but I have the right to dispute that figure and regularly do so. However, that process is fully documented and signed off by both myself and the tax assessor's office. If I later want to borrow against the property, it is that final value that will be used by the bank to determine what amount of loan they are willing to make.

It's not like I can assert on the one hand that a property is worth 1 million dollars for the purpose of tax valuation and then go to the bank and claim a 2 million dollar valuation to get a loan in that amount. This is fraud, and is essentially what Trump is alleged to have done on many occasions.

 

[Dog 2.0]

There is a peanut of truth in Dog's BS, as there is with most BS.

The banks didn't file suit against Trump because they knew they hadn't been defrauded. From personal experience when it comes to development loans the banks do not take what you write as gospel, they send PIs, CPAs and the like to go neck deep up everybody's assholes involved before they commit to risking a hundred mil. Bet the farm everybody who loaned for a large project to Trump knew the true score but did it anyway.

The situation for a banker, to file suit, would be a public admission they actually believed Trump's ridiculous claims and/or seemed to not care they were lied to, a practice understood by insiders but not the public. A lawsuit asserting that had happened would be an embarrassment no banker could possibly survive. And public perception is everything to bankers. That's why they use middlemen like Trump for property development in the first place.

That said it's probably not going to save Trump. Might in criminal trial were you need a unanimous verdict, just one MAGAt could prevent that, but in this they only need a majority and lying on the apps is indeed against the law.

"A peanut of truth" nothing I said was not true. Here's another truth. For anyone not named Trump tax assessment disputes are settled by a tax commission, not by lawsuit in court. This suit is politically motivated by an AG who made a campaign promise to do it.

 

[hobie1616]

Prepare for enhanced grifting.

As Trump’s Legal Woes Mount, So Do Financial Pressures on Him

The New York attorney general’s fraud lawsuit that was filed on Wednesday against former President Donald J. Trump seeks to recover $250 million from his company and essentially run him out of business in the state.

Next month, Mr. Trump’s company will go on trial in Manhattan on criminal tax charges in a separate case that could cost millions of dollars in penalties and legal fees.

And on the horizon are civil suits from people seeking to hold the former president responsible for injuries and trauma inflicted during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by his supporters, a possible wave of litigation that some of his advisers fear could prove extremely costly to him.

Together, the numerous investigations and lawsuits swirling around Mr. Trump are creating new and significant financial pressures on him.

There is no evidence that he faces any immediate crisis. In an interview on Thursday, Eric Trump, his son, said the Trump Organization was in a strong position, noting that it had recently paid off some outstanding debts and seen a windfall from the sale of the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

But when stacked up altogether, the potential costs that the former president faces show that his challenges extend beyond the courtroom and into the maintenance of his wealth even as he continues to signal that he plans another run for the White House.

At a minimum, Mr. Trump’s hopes for new moneymaking ventures are sputtering: The deal that had the potential to reap perhaps the biggest profits for him — a merger involving his upstart social media company — is hanging by a thread, as regulatory and law enforcement scrutiny threatens to unravel it.

Mr. Trump remains a formidable political fund-raising force, but even there his situation is complex. Should he become a presidential candidate, he could face tight new restrictions on the personal use of money he has kept in his main political action committee and used for legal fees, Trump properties and even Melania Trump’s designer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/...on=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending
John A. E. Pottow, a professor of commercial law at University of Michigan, said the sort of legal cases that the Trump Organization faces can hurt any corporation.

“You have a company that has some serious litigation risks,” he said. “They have major liability on the horizon.”

Several experts in real estate and commercial law said that Mr. Trump and his business would be able to weather the storms. The Trump Organization generated hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of its Washington hotel this year, as well as from other recent deals, and it has either refinanced or paid off a sizable portion of its loans.

The company also continues to collect revenue from some of its commercial real estate projects, while many of Mr. Trump’s hotels have rebounded from deep losses incurred in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s performance.

His golf clubs, many of which saw a surge in business during the pandemic, have begun to attract new tournaments in recent months, including contentious ones like those managed by the Saudi-backed LIV network.

Eric Trump said the family owned most of their real-estate assets “free and clear” and have “low debt relative to the value of our assets.” (The suit filed on Wednesday by Attorney General Letitia James of New York accused Mr. Trump and his family, including Eric Trump, of deliberately and systematically overstating the value of the company’s assets.)

Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for the former president, described the various investigations as “weaponized government” by Democrats whose efforts “lack credibility, they lack the facts, and they lack the law.”

Mr. Trump is no stranger to legal skirmishes and financial pressures. He filed and defended dozens of lawsuits over the years, and in the early 1990s, faced near financial ruin. His current predicaments pale in comparison to those challenges.

Yet Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes threaten to roll back some of his recent gains and cast a pall over his presidential run.

In suing the former president and three of his children on Wednesday, Ms. James is seeking to bar the Trumps from ever running a business in the state again. She is also seeking to prevent Mr. Trump from acquiring real estate in New York for five years. Although Ms. James stopped short of trying to dissolve the Trump Organization, her office is trying to shut down at least some of his New York operations.

Ms. James’s case, which accuses Mr. Trump and his family business of lying to lenders and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars, had no immediate impact on the company.

It could take years for the case to play out in the courts, and even then, a judge would have to grant the punishments Ms. James is seeking. Mr. Trump could also try to settle the case before a trial.

More immediately, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial will begin in Manhattan next month. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, working with Ms. James’s office, accused the company of conspiring with its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, to evade taxes in a scheme that doled out off-the-books perks to Mr. Weisselberg and other executives.

Mr. Weisselberg recently pleaded guilty for his role in the scheme, which included receiving a rent-free apartment, leased Mercedes-Benzes and private school tuition for his grandchildren. Although he refused to turn on Mr. Trump, he agreed to testify at the company’s trial, a move that could help prosecutors make their case.

If the company is convicted, a judge could impose a relatively modest penalty: less than $2 million. But it also will incur a significant sum in legal fees and could face trouble with lenders and the local authorities, who might shy from doing business with a company convicted of a felony. (The specific Trump Organization entities that are under indictment are not thought to hold any loans or liquor licenses, so the fallout could be limited.)

At the same time, Mr. Trump is facing a series of investigations and legal costs related to his efforts to hold onto office after he lost the 2020 election, as well as his taking — and then refusing to return — presidential records and more than 300 individual documents marked classified when he left office. He recently paid $3 million from his super PAC to a lawyer he hired to help defend himself in those cases.

And potentially hanging over Mr. Trump is an apparently unresolved dispute with the I.R.S., although its status is unclear.

The former president is also facing no less than seven separate civil lawsuits that are trying to hold him accountable — and seek damages from him — for the role he played in inspiring the chaos and violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. People close to Mr. Trump anticipate other suits are likely to follow.

In February, a federal judge in Washington ruled that three of the suits against Mr. Trump could move forward, brushing aside his arguments that he could not be held liable for riling up the crowd on Jan. 6 under the First Amendment and because he was immune to civil litigation. In his decision, Judge Amit P. Mehta said that the plaintiffs could try to prove their case that Mr. Trump had conspired with the mob that day. The former president has appealed the judge’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said that if the Jan. 6 suits against Mr. Trump were successful, calculating the amount that he might have to pay in damages would depend on the individual ordeals suffered by the plaintiffs. They include members of Congress, Capitol Police officers and Washington residents.

“I don’t think that a fine like that — even if they had to pay $250 million — would bring the company down,” said Phillip A. Braun, a finance professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, citing the demand from Ms. James. “It would be painful for the family, but they probably could do it by liquidating some of their properties.”

When Mr. Trump left the White House, money seemed unlikely to be a concern. Despite the shadow of Jan. 6, he appeared poised to cash in on his appeal in conservative media circles, including through his social media venture — the merger of the parent company of Truth Social, his Twitter-like social media platform, with a special purpose acquisition company called Digital World Acquisition Corp.

But the deal has been stymied by dual investigations by the S.E.C. and federal prosecutors. The original Sept. 8 deadline for completing the deal has passed, and Digital World could face the prospect of liquidation in the coming weeks.

The promoters of Digital World are hoping that the company’s shareholders — most of whom are retail investors — will agree to give them until next September to complete the deal. But even with another year, the prospects of the S.E.C.’s approval of the deal between Digital World and Trump Media & Technology Group look grim.

Regulators and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are looking into potentially improper communications between representatives of Digital World and Trump Media before the special purpose acquisition company’s public offering. They are also examining unusual trading in Digital World’s stock before the merger announcement last October.

Digital World not only raised nearly $300 million in cash in its initial public offering last September. It also got dozens of hedge funds to commit to providing an additional $1 billion in financing after the two companies announced the merger in October. Mr. Trump, who stands to receive more than 70 million shares if the merger is completed, got on the phone with some of the big investors willing to commit at least $50 million.

But the inability to complete the merger in time led to the termination of that $1 billion financing deal. It is not clear if Digital World and Trump Media can persuade those investors to sign onto a new agreement, given the legal uncertainty surrounding the merger and Mr. Trump personally. Shares of Digital World have plummeted to $17, from $97.

 

[Dog 2.0]

In a sense, yes. It's true that the tax assessor assigns a value for tax purposes, but I have the right to dispute that figure and regularly do so. However, that process is fully documented and signed off by both myself and the tax assessor's office. If I later want to borrow against the property, it is that final value that will be used by the bank to determine what amount of loan they are willing to make.

It's not like I can assert on the one hand that a property is worth 1 million dollars for the purpose of tax valuation and then go to the bank and claim a 2 million dollar valuation to get a loan in that amount. This is fraud, and is essentially what Trump is alleged to have done on many occasions.

And when you dispute your assessment how is the dispute resolved?

 

[Dog 2.0]

In a sense, yes. It's true that the tax assessor assigns a value for tax purposes, but I have the right to dispute that figure and regularly do so. However, that process is fully documented and signed off by both myself and the tax assessor's office. If I later want to borrow against the property, it is that final value that will be used by the bank to determine what amount of loan they are willing to make.

It's not like I can assert on the one hand that a property is worth 1 million dollars for the purpose of tax valuation and then go to the bank and claim a 2 million dollar valuation to get a loan in that amount. This is fraud, and is essentially what Trump is alleged to have done on many occasions.

Bullshit.

 

[Remodel]

Bullshit.

OH? How do you think it works?

 

[hobie1616]

Mar-a-Lago special master orders Trump team to back up any claims of FBI 'planting' evidence

The special master overseeing the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation has ordered former President Donald Trump's lawyers to back up out-of-court assertions that the FBI may have planted evidence at the property during their search last month.

www.cnn.com

 

[hobie1616]

 

[Dog 2.0]

OH? How do you think it works?

Banks are responsible for their own assessment; they don't automatically accept whatever valuation you negotiate with the tax assessor. And BTW, around here tax assessments are reviewed only every 5 years. Valuations can change a lot in 5 years.

 

[jzk]

Prepare for enhanced grifting.

As Trump’s Legal Woes Mount, So Do Financial Pressures on Him

The New York attorney general’s fraud lawsuit that was filed on Wednesday against former President Donald J. Trump seeks to recover $250 million from his company and essentially run him out of business in the state.

Next month, Mr. Trump’s company will go on trial in Manhattan on criminal tax charges in a separate case that could cost millions of dollars in penalties and legal fees.

And on the horizon are civil suits from people seeking to hold the former president responsible for injuries and trauma inflicted during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by his supporters, a possible wave of litigation that some of his advisers fear could prove extremely costly to him.

Together, the numerous investigations and lawsuits swirling around Mr. Trump are creating new and significant financial pressures on him.

There is no evidence that he faces any immediate crisis. In an interview on Thursday, Eric Trump, his son, said the Trump Organization was in a strong position, noting that it had recently paid off some outstanding debts and seen a windfall from the sale of the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

But when stacked up altogether, the potential costs that the former president faces show that his challenges extend beyond the courtroom and into the maintenance of his wealth even as he continues to signal that he plans another run for the White House.

At a minimum, Mr. Trump’s hopes for new moneymaking ventures are sputtering: The deal that had the potential to reap perhaps the biggest profits for him — a merger involving his upstart social media company — is hanging by a thread, as regulatory and law enforcement scrutiny threatens to unravel it.

Mr. Trump remains a formidable political fund-raising force, but even there his situation is complex. Should he become a presidential candidate, he could face tight new restrictions on the personal use of money he has kept in his main political action committee and used for legal fees, Trump properties and even Melania Trump’s designer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/...on=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending
John A. E. Pottow, a professor of commercial law at University of Michigan, said the sort of legal cases that the Trump Organization faces can hurt any corporation.

“You have a company that has some serious litigation risks,” he said. “They have major liability on the horizon.”

Several experts in real estate and commercial law said that Mr. Trump and his business would be able to weather the storms. The Trump Organization generated hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of its Washington hotel this year, as well as from other recent deals, and it has either refinanced or paid off a sizable portion of its loans.

The company also continues to collect revenue from some of its commercial real estate projects, while many of Mr. Trump’s hotels have rebounded from deep losses incurred in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s performance.

His golf clubs, many of which saw a surge in business during the pandemic, have begun to attract new tournaments in recent months, including contentious ones like those managed by the Saudi-backed LIV network.

Eric Trump said the family owned most of their real-estate assets “free and clear” and have “low debt relative to the value of our assets.” (The suit filed on Wednesday by Attorney General Letitia James of New York accused Mr. Trump and his family, including Eric Trump, of deliberately and systematically overstating the value of the company’s assets.)

Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for the former president, described the various investigations as “weaponized government” by Democrats whose efforts “lack credibility, they lack the facts, and they lack the law.”

Mr. Trump is no stranger to legal skirmishes and financial pressures. He filed and defended dozens of lawsuits over the years, and in the early 1990s, faced near financial ruin. His current predicaments pale in comparison to those challenges.

Yet Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes threaten to roll back some of his recent gains and cast a pall over his presidential run.

In suing the former president and three of his children on Wednesday, Ms. James is seeking to bar the Trumps from ever running a business in the state again. She is also seeking to prevent Mr. Trump from acquiring real estate in New York for five years. Although Ms. James stopped short of trying to dissolve the Trump Organization, her office is trying to shut down at least some of his New York operations.

Ms. James’s case, which accuses Mr. Trump and his family business of lying to lenders and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars, had no immediate impact on the company.

It could take years for the case to play out in the courts, and even then, a judge would have to grant the punishments Ms. James is seeking. Mr. Trump could also try to settle the case before a trial.

More immediately, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial will begin in Manhattan next month. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, working with Ms. James’s office, accused the company of conspiring with its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, to evade taxes in a scheme that doled out off-the-books perks to Mr. Weisselberg and other executives.

Mr. Weisselberg recently pleaded guilty for his role in the scheme, which included receiving a rent-free apartment, leased Mercedes-Benzes and private school tuition for his grandchildren. Although he refused to turn on Mr. Trump, he agreed to testify at the company’s trial, a move that could help prosecutors make their case.

If the company is convicted, a judge could impose a relatively modest penalty: less than $2 million. But it also will incur a significant sum in legal fees and could face trouble with lenders and the local authorities, who might shy from doing business with a company convicted of a felony. (The specific Trump Organization entities that are under indictment are not thought to hold any loans or liquor licenses, so the fallout could be limited.)

At the same time, Mr. Trump is facing a series of investigations and legal costs related to his efforts to hold onto office after he lost the 2020 election, as well as his taking — and then refusing to return — presidential records and more than 300 individual documents marked classified when he left office. He recently paid $3 million from his super PAC to a lawyer he hired to help defend himself in those cases.

And potentially hanging over Mr. Trump is an apparently unresolved dispute with the I.R.S., although its status is unclear.

The former president is also facing no less than seven separate civil lawsuits that are trying to hold him accountable — and seek damages from him — for the role he played in inspiring the chaos and violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. People close to Mr. Trump anticipate other suits are likely to follow.

In February, a federal judge in Washington ruled that three of the suits against Mr. Trump could move forward, brushing aside his arguments that he could not be held liable for riling up the crowd on Jan. 6 under the First Amendment and because he was immune to civil litigation. In his decision, Judge Amit P. Mehta said that the plaintiffs could try to prove their case that Mr. Trump had conspired with the mob that day. The former president has appealed the judge’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said that if the Jan. 6 suits against Mr. Trump were successful, calculating the amount that he might have to pay in damages would depend on the individual ordeals suffered by the plaintiffs. They include members of Congress, Capitol Police officers and Washington residents.

“I don’t think that a fine like that — even if they had to pay $250 million — would bring the company down,” said Phillip A. Braun, a finance professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, citing the demand from Ms. James. “It would be painful for the family, but they probably could do it by liquidating some of their properties.”

When Mr. Trump left the White House, money seemed unlikely to be a concern. Despite the shadow of Jan. 6, he appeared poised to cash in on his appeal in conservative media circles, including through his social media venture — the merger of the parent company of Truth Social, his Twitter-like social media platform, with a special purpose acquisition company called Digital World Acquisition Corp.

But the deal has been stymied by dual investigations by the S.E.C. and federal prosecutors. The original Sept. 8 deadline for completing the deal has passed, and Digital World could face the prospect of liquidation in the coming weeks.

The promoters of Digital World are hoping that the company’s shareholders — most of whom are retail investors — will agree to give them until next September to complete the deal. But even with another year, the prospects of the S.E.C.’s approval of the deal between Digital World and Trump Media & Technology Group look grim.

Regulators and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are looking into potentially improper communications between representatives of Digital World and Trump Media before the special purpose acquisition company’s public offering. They are also examining unusual trading in Digital World’s stock before the merger announcement last October.

Digital World not only raised nearly $300 million in cash in its initial public offering last September. It also got dozens of hedge funds to commit to providing an additional $1 billion in financing after the two companies announced the merger in October. Mr. Trump, who stands to receive more than 70 million shares if the merger is completed, got on the phone with some of the big investors willing to commit at least $50 million.

But the inability to complete the merger in time led to the termination of that $1 billion financing deal. It is not clear if Digital World and Trump Media can persuade those investors to sign onto a new agreement, given the legal uncertainty surrounding the merger and Mr. Trump personally. Shares of Digital World have plummeted to $17, from $97.

Why no criminal charges?

 

[hobie1616]

Trump Mansplains To Letitia James How To Do Her Job After She Sues Him

The ex-president bloviated on Fox News after the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit accusing him of "astounding" fraud.

www.huffpost.com

 

[Remodel]

Banks are responsible for their own assessment; they don't automatically accept whatever valuation you negotiate with the tax assessor. And BTW, around here tax assessments are reviewed only every 5 years. Valuations can change a lot in 5 years.

Around here, properties are re-evaluated every year. The very first thing the bank does when you apply for a securtiy-backed loan is to asses the value of that security. Around here, that means they go to the County Tax Assessor's web site and look up the property valuation that has been set for it. For the average Joe, that's the most the bank will allow for that property. They certainly aren't going to offer you more money because you tell them that it's worth more than that.

 

[Bus Driver]

Mar-a-Lago special master orders Trump team to back up any claims of FBI 'planting' evidence

The special master overseeing the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation has ordered former President Donald Trump's lawyers to back up out-of-court assertions that the FBI may have planted evidence at the property during their search last month.

www.cnn.com

He has been asked to "back up" out of court statements on many occasions.

His record for doing so is "whatever and zero".

I expect it here, too.

 

[billy backstay]

Around here, properties are re-evaluated every year. The very first thing the bank does when you apply for a securtiy-backed loan is to asses the value of that security. Around here, that means they go to the County Tax Assessor's web site and look up the property valuation that has been set for it. For the average Joe, that's the most the bank will allow for that property. They certainly aren't going to offer you more money because you tell them that it's worth more than that.

In CT every property is revalued state-wide every ten years, but not all at the same time, which makes comparing assessed values, or mill rates ineffective for determining comparable market values between different towns and cities.

Years ago when visiting San Diego, I learned that properties there were only revalued upon the sale to a new owner, hope that has changed now??

Millionaires with rarely used waterfront mansions were paying the same taxes as working stiffs in a small downtown condo, because they had owned the homes for decades, so the assessed value never increased upon a sale.
.

 

[Dog 2.0]

Around here, properties are re-evaluated every year. The very first thing the bank does when you apply for a securtiy-backed loan is to asses the value of that security. Around here, that means they go to the County Tax Assessor's web site and look up the property valuation that has been set for it. For the average Joe, that's the most the bank will allow for that property. They certainly aren't going to offer you more money because you tell them that it's worth more than that.

And, if you negotiate a value with your tax assessor you are not responsible if a bank uses that value to make their own loan decisions. The bank decided on its own to use that assessed value.

 

[shaggy]

I have the feeling that Dog2 and the elk are just spouting the talking points without stopping to think what auditors and appraisers actually do in the real world.

Ideally, a bank or insurance appraiser starts from independent sources of info and work towards a value. In reality, they start with the valuation handed them by the owner and look for data points supporting it.

Used to do mortgages... This is 100% true... " Hey (Personal company appraiser guy) i need 400k, last one was 300, can ya get it??" 99% of the time he would be within about 10 K.. And that was residential.. Can't imagine what corp/big time stuff is like....

 

[shaggy]

That mailing unsolicited ballots to every name on the voting rolls and allowing unsecured drop boxes was ripe for fraud.

Um, you got any proof?? Cite plz...