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As you well know, there is no victim, as in no single person who was harmed. Yet Trump's actions are a crime nonetheless. The whole victimless crime angle is a derivative of a straw man fallacy.
As a society we prescribe a minimum acceptable level of behaviour through laws. When people contravene these laws we impose penalties. There is no requirement for someone to be harmed.
That said, I'm sure you can imagine what would happen if fraud was not a crime. It's just not possible to conduct business of any kind if there is no penalty for fraud.
The apologists are out and about it seems. The rich sycophants I get, wanting lower taxes and all. What I'll never get is being middle or lower class and being so cucked as to defend some bourgeois criminal like he was a friend.
"Temporarily embarrassed millionaires".
My parents are broke. They will always vote conservative despite the benefits going to the wealthy, because they feel like they ought to be wealthy.
There was no victim because he did nothing wrong. Should a person be able to list their house for more than its true value, have someone agree to the price and then apply for a loan?
Of course not.
Should a company be allowed to make up the numbers shown on its financial reports?
No, but that is not what happened. Do you actually understand what they did that was so wrong?
That's exactly what happened.
What specifically do you think they falsified?
The purported "fair value" of a range of assets supporting Trump's net worth.
Was the bank not able to do their own assessment of the value of the property? Was the bank upset with the outcome?
They could have and no they weren't.
However, as you well know, that's not how fraud works. They lied in order to obtain a benefit. That's fraud. They got caught, they're being penalised.
The judgement does kind of address your attitude:
You're an engineer right? Imagine building a bridge with degraded steel, then on being discovered your defence is simply that the bridge hasn't fallen down and everyone using it has been happy enough.
As you can imagine, enforcing standards serves bridge users everywhere.
On each page of the document there was a disclaimer that the loan company do its own due diligence, and that is what they do in underwriting. I sell mainly houses, but the one time a sold a commerical building worth like $750k (I dont recall the actual number), I had to give them SO many documents it was annoying. Why would they not do this for something for tens of millions of dollars?
Let me come at this from a different angle. There was no actual victim, people like Kevin O leary, me, and probably half of people dont think he did a thing wrong. What justifies a $400 million or so penalty? Can you see how they are targeting him and trying to make him go bankrupt?
Engineers are not all the type of engineers that work on structures, but I understand what you are saying.
You could write a book on each of these issues, but given that you're not bothering to read and understand my earlier comments, I'll give you the abridged version:
These points are both straw man arguments, you're trying to re-frame the issue such that it sounds fair enough in a common sense kind of way. The bare facts are, New York can create laws and enforce them. Trump contravened those laws by making misrepresentations regarding his affairs. The court has determined an appropriate penalty.
If Trump doesn't like those laws or the associated penalties he has three options. Don't do business in NYC (but it's too late for that), lobby law makers in NYC (too late for that also), or appeal the court's decision. He's not going to appeal because he knows he will lose and he'd have to put up $450m in 30 days - much better to try stringing out payments.
Not really. By anyone's reading of the law, Trump has contravened that law.
As we both know, if this were a democrat you would be screaming blue bloody murder over this.
The issue is that you dont actually know the things he allegedly did fraud with, and I can force you to look into it. Do you think that all the people that know the case and agree with me dont know what they are talking about? How about Kevin O Leary, he is a pretty smart guys and completely agrees with me?
Can you please explain how even if what you think he did is true, how that justifies $400 million or so? And on top of that they the case of the rape, that has no evidence but another $90 million or so. And all the other court cases that just happen to pop up this year. How can you not see the targeted attack with the justice system?
Goodness me.
This is Ad hominem.
This is an appeal to authority.
This is false cause.
That's 3 distinct logical fallacies in 7 sentences. You should probably look into it. If your argument relies on logical fallacies
Regardless...
I'm not sure what to make of this statement. I've looked through Engoron's ruling, and I suspect that you have not. I also work with Tax Legislation, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and International Accounting Standards on a daily basis, albeit in another jurisdiction. If you really want a well-informed opinion you should probably give IFRS 13 a once-over, as that is the reporting standard that deals with Fair Value Measurement (the abridged version is: there's a lot of regulatory hoo-haa around how to determine fair value, it's not just what the owner thinks is "fair").
Just as a heads up, you've mangled the grammar around "the things he allegedly did fraud with". Allegedly is a term used prior to a court's finding of guilt, which happened a while back now. A better way to make your assertion would be "you don't actually know what he fraudulently misrepresented".
O'Leary is a billionaire conservative. Of course he's going to undermine any verdict which is not favourable to billionaire conservatives. You might want to read this forbes article which wipes the floor with him. In essence, it's absolutely patently absurd to claim that everyone fraudulently mis-states the values of their assets by hundreds of millions of dollars.
I can do better than that, I can direct you to page 81 of Engoron's ruling in the section entitled Disgorgement of Ill-Gotten Gains where Engoron concisely enumerates the components of the penalty and the information on which he relied. If you're not into the wordiness of the 5 page explanation, there's a handy summary in the orders on page 90. Basically, there's $168m in interest differential, $128m profit from the post office, $60m in profit from ferry point, and then interest on the penalties will amount to another $100m or so.
That said, I suspect you're not really asking how his fraud justifies a $400m penalty, you just don't like the vibe of such a strong penalty?
I don't really know anything about this case sorry.
This is just hyperbole really. I mean from your perspective it's a targeted attack but from mine it's just the application of law. Crimes have consequences and all that.
What is the alternative? Just give him a free pass in order to avoid the impression that the cases are politically motivated?
I am going to keep this short so you dont have to write a novel in response. Concise comments are better than comprehensive ones. Is this essentially what you think happened? Do you think the rape case was also correct and justified?
The problem is I dont think you can step back and see what is happening. When many of the democrat/leftists say that trump cant be allowed to gain control of power, they impeach him twice, they are in the process of trying to bankrupt him, and throw him in prison. To me, someone that is not going to vote for trump, its obvious what is happening, and its not justice. And if you dont think they can use the government to harm their enemies, I would point to the Durham report.
No. I think what's happened is described in Engoron's ruling. Have you read it?
I don't really know anything about the rape case.
The bigger picture is informed by the minutia, not the other way around. You're trying to say Trump is the victim of a targeted attack as evidenced by the multiple cases he's defending. Maybe he's just a criminal, who has been acting with an expectation of impunity.
Regardless, I think we should leave our little tete a tete here, as it doesn't seem very productive. Of course you can have the last word but I don't intend to respond.
If that is not what you think he did, be very direct about the most egregious thing that was done. The problem is I dont care about what that judge has to say, he is a corrupt shit stain of a human that misuses his power to harm the whole country. Its is about the evaluation of a property that the bank did independently, and used as a weapon.
So then if you dont know anything about the rape case then you should look into it because its part of the overall picture of what is happening. Let me give you the quick synopsis, they took a situation that happened like 30 years ago, with no evidence, and the only witness literally might be insane, and from that they are trying to take nearly $100 million from trump because he wasnt even allowed to defend himself. How is does that not point to more corruption.
Oh gotcha, you dont actually understand what is happening in the case.
You've done a pretty good job establishing your ignorance. Don't hurt yourself with the mental gymnastics.
Oh yeah, doing real estate for decades makes me super ignorant about real estate financing... Is that the best insult you got?
I don't see what more needs to be said. You're ignoring every fact in the case as hard as you can. Quit embarrassing yourself. Good day.
Again, you literally dont know what the case is about. You can keep getting your news from partisan hacks if you want, but then you are always going to just be repeating lies. Literally listen to any non partisan person who knows real estate and they will tell you the same thing. For example take Kevin O Leary and see what he has to say. Or I guess you can just keep your fingers in your ears if you wish.