Judge has ruled that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling Tuesday in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

      • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
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        I sure hope the Republican donor class is neglecting the rest of the 2024 races for the sake of trying in vain to keep Trump out of prison

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        You reminded me of a video news story from the early 2000s where the news station interviewed a guy, who panhandled while pretending to be a wheelchair bound homeless person in front of Walmart, as a sort of “gotcha” journalism piece. He was totally open and honest about it and was chuckling the entire time. At the end of the piece they asked “so now they we have outed you on tv, how are you going to trick people into giving you money?” He replied, "I’m just going to go over there (while pointing to adjacent stores). “And you think you will get people to give you money?” “Yeah, no one knows who I am and people forget so quickly that it won’t effect me”. (These aren’t exact quotes.)

        In a way Trump does the same thing. Everyone forgets his past actions quickly, blames the outcomes on the other party, and just moves on to different allegations he can spin. There’s so much news surrounding him theres little time to actually interpret his actions, and he can just shift gears to another group of downtrodden citizens to swindle if he pisses his supporters off.

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          He uses the firehose technique of spraying crimes, shitty words and threats so you can’t keep up.

  • ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works
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    Went to Fox News to find this huge story. Scrolled by 7 non stories to find the headline ‘judge announced ruling on trump case’ with a picture of the judge looking black holding a microphone as if she’s some *political activist,” with no mention that he was found guilty of massive decades long fraud.

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      FYI the photo you’re referring to is of NY Attorney General Letitia James, not the judge. She looks black because she’s black.

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          That headline is accurate but not precise. If they wanted to inform people they could use the same number if words and describe what happened better.

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            I didn’t mean fox’s headline was accurate, I meant the previous commentor’s description of what fox did was accurate. I guess fox was accurate by technicality, but I would consider it misleading more than anything, what with the vague headline and victorious looking Trump.

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      Excuse me what the fuck does looking black mean in this context? She is black, of course she looks black…

  • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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    hell yeah

    Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.

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        Yes, read it from another post! As far as I can tell the only Trumps who dodged it are Ivanka and Tiffany.

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      At this point, who is stupid enough to do business with Trump that would also care if he has a business license?

      And why would Trump even pretend to do legitimate business after finding a donation grift that keeps on giving the more trouble he gets in?

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    Oh okay, I was a bit confused at first. This is part of the massive civil case, but these are claims within that case that the judge issued summary judgment for. There are still more claims that will go to trial next week.

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    If he had lost in 2016, Trump TV would have stolen Fox’s audience and been the de facto voice of the Republican Party. No indictments. No scrutiny. Hillary would have been in charge during the pandemic and kept the public safe. The Supreme Court would still be a trusted institution (minus Citizens United) running in the political background.

    We would have our nice, stable, boring politics back. Hillary would wear a tan pantsuit, and that would be the headline for the next two weeks.

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      Honestly I don’t know about that. I think Trump was a direct product of Romney losing in 2012.

      Sooner or later, the far right was going to take off their masks, and the Republicans were going to show that the extremists hold their leash. It was always going to come to a head like this I think.

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        This has been coming since the 90s. Without external pressure caused by the Soviet Union, infighting was inevitable, and infighting ultimately breeds extremism.

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    And you wonder why he never wanted to release his tax returns. Becoming President put him under the microscope and what he did after the 2020 election was by his own doing. I hope that Trump supporters stick with him if he’s in prison before the 2024 election. It’ll be the easiest election to win. One candidate is in prison for attempting to overturn the last election but claims he can pardon himself. The other is not. Hrmmm which one should you vote for?

    • v_krishna@lemmy.ml
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      Crazy part is thanks in no small part to the electoral college it’ll still be a close election in your scenario

        • Gumus@lemmy.world
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          A lot of people voted for Brexit just to see what happens (because they actually didn’t believe it would go through). Look at how that worked for them…

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            The idea of frivolous voting like that is pretty dumb. Or “I’ll vote for this person to shake up the system!” or “as a protest!”

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        For sure people will, but a lot less will. Either way, he’s not going to win. That being said, FUCKING VOTE!!! If everyone votes, the right has zero chance. They know it, it’s why they’re doing everything they can to make it harder to vote, and this bullshit gerrymandering they’ve managed to pull off.

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    The big questions that no one is asking:

    Why did it take so long to get him for fraud? They specifically mentioned that this was while he was building his real estate empire. He’s been doing that since the 80s. Why the fuck did it take some 4 decades to build up a big enough case against him?! Why wasn’t he previously investigated? Why weren’t any of our useless news agencies digging into his finances? He ran for fucken president, for fucks sakes… why couldn’t all this mess have been avoided if various news departments and law enforcement agencies did their damn jobs.

    The most egregious thing about all this is that if he didn’t run for president, probably none of this criminal activity would ever have really come to light. District attorneys and news rooms across the country would have just let all this slide. Which then makes you wonder - how many other billionaires are there out there who are nearly as corrupt as Trump, but because they don’t lavish the media attention, they keep low and none of us know about them. Why aren’t those people being investigated? Why does it take decades to go after these asswipes and only when they purposefully shine the light on themselves?

      • ____@infosec.pub
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        What’s especially interesting to me about that is that in certain industries (real estate seems a likely one, insurance is the one I know for certain), other states will ask when granting/renewing licenses whether there has been official action against the licensee and/or a licensed business entity they were an officer/partner of… And decline to issue the same license based on that action.

        Not to say the biz can’t continue in, say, FL, but some significant restructuring of officers and the like may be required. I don’t think business licenses or corp filings ask the same questions, but that may vary by state. In either case, this is a bigger problem for him than “not doing business in NY”

    • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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      Are you stupid for using your five senses and memory of recent events synthesized by your ability to recognize patterns? No. You’re not stupid.

  • fne8w2ah@lemmy.world
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    Let covfefe’s house of cards crumble like the small whiny weenie that he is!

    • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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      For anyone, like me, who didn’t know what a summary judgement was:

      Summary judgment is granted when the facts can be decided upon without needing to go to trial, where the opposing party would lose due to a lack of evidence. If it’s not clear that there is no more evidence, then summary judgment must be denied.

      • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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        Fun fact: while the word judgment has accepted spellings in US English with or without an “e” after the “g,” US legal system spelling does not have that flexibility. The correct spelling in legal filings is “judgment.” I say this because you have both and it tickles me.

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          Huh, who knew? You think I would’ve noticed it from the two times it copied and pasted correctly.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      Isn’t this the case where his lawyers screwed up and failed to file paperwork requesting a jury trial, so the judge got to make the ruling on her own?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has ruled that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

    Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling Tuesday in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

    The decision, days before the start of a non-jury trial in Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

    Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums, Engoron found.

    Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

    Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing a criminal case over the same conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that could disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business in the state.


    The original article contains 345 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 38%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • FUCKRedditMods@lemm.ee
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      You think the KARMA he deserves is being meted out?! With this slow fucking shitshow?

      It’s not karma to break the law and then be prosecuted for it, that’s just “the law” or society/government. If karma was real this fucker never would have been president.

      If karma was real my life wouldn’t suck so hard. If karma was real then 50% of the world’s money wouldn’t be in the hands of like 83 terrible people. If karma was real police officers wouldn’t get away with murder all the time, or get a $31k/year pension for shooting an unarmed man in a hotel hallway (cops and rich people are an example of when the LAW is just as imaginary as karma).

      The list could go on forever. The idea of karma is a nice fantasy we justice-minded people can imagine, but in reality, it’s just bullshit like every other superstition.

      • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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        I think it’s more that until now he’s always skated by on technicalities or republican intervention, and now there are 4 fairly ironclad cases that republicans have no real power to stop, and right now it’s slowly being released on him in a painfully constipated fashion, almost certainly to become a full diarrheal blowout before it’s all done.

    • squiblet@kbin.social
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      More just cause and effect. Commit obvious financial crimes on paper for years, you might get caught.

      • FUCKRedditMods@lemm.ee
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        Yeah, and get caught doing enough crimes, you might get punished.

        I doubt he’ll ever see prison though, or be forced to forfeit his ill gotten gains—hence, karma is fucking bullshit.

        He’s a thief, a liar, a con man, a rapist, and a fucking traitor. With what he’s done to America and Americans alone, there’s no “karmic” outcome that would suffice to balance the scale opposite this disgusting piece of shit.

    • morphballganon@mtgzone.com
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      No, if karma was real, we would be seeing significant consequences.

      If a man commits a crime with a gun, simply taking away his gun is not enough.