The best, most thorough explication of the gaping, tractor-trailer-wide hole in the underhanded “fraud” judgment against Trump & sons I’ve seen yet.
One person who defended the verdict is CNN’s Laura Coates, who clearly doesn’t understand the implications or perhaps even the details of the case.
“Wouldn’t there be many companies who would not want to do business or loan money to people like yourself for investors if they know that they can get away with fraud and there’s no recourse to protect them?” she asked.
“Excuse me, what fraud?” (Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary) asked. “This is not about Trump anymore.”
“I know,” she claimed.
“When you get a developer that builds a building and he says it’s worth 400 million, and he wants to borrow 200 million from a bank, which happens every day everywhere on Earth, including every American city — every developer is an entrepreneur, they shine the light on their building, and they say it’s worth 400. The bank does its own due diligence — as was done in this case, because they’re very good at it, the banks are very good — and they say no, it’s worth 300, we’re only going to loan you 150 million. That haggling has gone on for decades, that’s how it works.”
O’Leary continued, “And then, in this case, even the bank that was supposedly defrauded, testified and said we didn’t lose anything. We want to do business with this guy again, we’d like to, but the judge said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, let’s penalize this developer for $355 million. And if we’re going to do that, let’s penalize all the developers all across America. They’ve all done the same thing. All of them should go to jail and we should stop building buildings.’ That’s what the message is from New York. Even the governor herself is concerned about what this looks like to investors all around the world. It’s not just U.S. domestic. All around the world, people are talking about what happened here. You really think people want to invest money in New York after this?”
Not if they’re even the slightest bit perspicacious and business-savvy, they don’t. Yet more rich buttery goodness at the link, as if the preceding excerpt wasn’t already enough.
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My God, he took out a loan, paid it back in full, paid all interest in full and the bank made a profit. The bank wants to do deals like this any day of the week and would even open special to do it twice on Sunday!
WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO WHEN THIS CAN HAPPEN?!