Dem
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Donald Trump has so many legal problems that we sometimes miss some of them. One that sort of snuck under the radar last week was the civil lawsuit New York AG Letitia James is pursuing. She is claiming that when offering his properties to banks as collateral for loans, he said they were worth a king's ransom, but when talking to the local property tax assessor, he said that were rat- and cockroach-infested garbage dumps that were worth virtually nothing. James is suing him for $250 million over this inconsistency.
The suit also accuses three of his adult children of helping him commit fraud. We won't tell you which ones, but we'll give you a hint: When was the last time you saw Tiffany hanging out with her father?
Trump was deposed for 7 hours last week at James' Lower Manhattan office, not far from where he was arraigned earlier in the week. It is a good thing Trump has a place to stay while in Manhattan, otherwise he might end up with substantial hotel bills. It is not known if he pleaded the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times, as it he did in his first deposition on the case, but he might have. The one problem with that is that in a civil suit filed by an AG, it is legal (and common) for the AG to tell the jury: "In his deposition the defendant took the Fifth 400 times. Do you think he would have done that if he were innocent?" A jury cannot infer guilt from pleading the Fifth in a criminal case, but they can in a civil case. Trump's lawyers surely told him this so he might not have clammed up completely last week. James did not depose him personally, but she has plenty of smart lawyers on her staff to handle this kind of thing.
Trump's lawyers, including Christopher Kise and Alina Habba, said there was absolutely no case and there was no fraud. Kise also said the transactions in questions were also wildly profitable for the banks. Of course, that is neither here nor there. If Trump gave a bank a property actually worth only $20 million to hold for a $100-million loan and didn't default, then it didn't actually hurt the bank that he lied about the property. But the core of the case is about his then turning around and telling the property-tax assessor that it was worth $1 million, thus lowering his tax bill. That's the big fraud. Lying to a bank is also fraud, but a jury member could think: "He paid off the loan, so no one was harmed." His illegally lowering his taxes is easier to explain to a jury. (V)