Trump on the Rocks?

The more you find out about the way Trump and his Organizaton inflated the value of their properties in the US, and in Scotland, the more you wonder if 'criminal intent' can be proven. And if the man insists this is a 'witch-hunt', does that make him a Witch?

The latest article uncovers some of the details, to add to the 'cash payments' for the Scottish golf courses that are the subject of 'Unexplaiined Wealth Orders in Scotland.

But having got away with it in the past, is Trump going to survive these investigations, or will he end up in Court?

Some motivation to be President again, to be immune from proscution....

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...p-legal-perils

The one thing that the man is obsessed with, other than Hillary Clinton, is his money.

Is he going to 'get away with it' this time? Or is it time for the birdie to Sing-Sing?

"A small town north of New York City is now openly confirming it has received subpoenas for two separate investigations into the Trump National Golf Club Westchester, where the Trump family has aggressively fought to lower its tax bill—while claiming a vastly inflated value elsewhere.
Since 2016, the town has valued the golf club at roughly $15 million. And every year, the Trump family business has tried to knock down the value drastically. And yet, on White House financial disclosures, then-President Donald Trump declared the golf club was worth more than $50 million.

Melanie Sloan, a government ethics attorney who serves as a senior adviser to the independent watchdog group American Oversight, said this is merely another example of Trump’s tax-dodging strategy that has taken far too long to prosecute.
“This has been an issue since Trump came in. Like with all the golf courses, he likes to value them one way to say he's richer than he is, then value them another way to lower his taxes,” she said. “The real question is, why has it taken so long?”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald...llar45-million

2 Prosecutors Leading N.Y. Trump Inquiry Resign, Clouding Case’s Future

The resignations came after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, was said to have expressed doubts about the case.

www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/nyregion/trump-ny-fraud-investigation.html


What's fascinating about this story is that this is the same Alvin Bragg who in his first week in office sent out this memo to his prosecutors:

nypost.com/2022/01/04/manhattan-da-alvin-bragg-to-stop-seeking-prison-in-some-cases/

Funny I don't see running an organization that is accused of committing fraud for over 25 years (give or take) on that list.


What's even more fascinating about this story is seeing many of the people who hailed Bragg for his "progressive approach on crime", now criticizing him and basically calling for him to be investigated and/or lose his job.

Thanks for this, Blackchubby, as I have been puzzled by the resignations announced the other day. Incidentally NYT articles in the UK require a subscription to be read but I am aware of the story from other sources.

On one obvious issue, there seems to me an inability for prosecutors to understand what 'white collar crime' is in terms of the harm it causes. Fraud is against the law, telling lies about income and expenditure to avoid paying taxes ditto, and the assumption is that nobody died, nobody was injured, so 'the pain' is really the loss of income, mostly to the Treasury, though in Bernie Madoff's case, the loss of life savings comdemning some elderly peple to a poverty they did not expect when investing on Wall St, notwithstanding the understable risks.

Your links suggest Bernie Madoff would have been forced to pay back as much as his funds allowed, and given a slap on the wrist and told not to be a naughty boy, but that said I am not sure anyone knows what Bragg thinks about what is, in practical terms, organized crime.

On another level, would you agree that the issue around incarceration is a consequence of the truly shocking sentences that the US imposed after adopting the 'tough on crime' policy that I think Clinton promoted, known as 'three strikes and you're out', meaning that low-level crimes like shoplifting or dealing small packets of dope could send someone away for life? I think you may agree that the inflation of prison inmates between the 1990s and Obama's first term created a lucrative business for privately run prisons, but was morally unjust in too many cases, and it was in either the first of second Obama term that some of these ludicrous sentences were amended.

But consider too, as an example, the case of a 12-year old in Jacksonville, Florida that was the subject of a documentary series on American crime. A rough sleeper was shot dead, and a 12 year old arrested and charged, having confessed to the murder. No murder weapon was found, so no DNA could establish either that the boy shot anyone, or with what weapon. In the film, it is said he ran away from home after being beaten with a stick or an iron bar by his grandmother, and when the boy was brought into the police station, his mother arrived and instead of offering the boy comfort, confronted him with angry words, following a similar barrage of abuse by the policewoman who arrested him. Not one of these people ever questioned the confession, though one could surmise that the boy had become involved with some bad peope on the street, was easily manipulated and so on.
Moreover, before trial he was sent to an adult prison -at the age of 12! One shudders to think what happened to him there. Two years later, aged 14 he was sentenced to life without a shred of evidence to prove his guilt other than some CCTV footage putting him near the scene of the crime, and his unchallenged confession. He is expected to spend 35 years or more in prison, at a cost of I think, more than a million dollars or some eye-waterng sum of money. At the very least, this case begs questions about the treatment of minors in the justice system where there seems no real distinction between a child and an adult.

What would reform therefore look like, but can it be done without allowing children to 'get away with murder'?

Murder is the kind of crime for which incarceration is inevitable, but the point is that if your law enforcement agencies have gone so far in the direction of punishment that sentences for minor crimes are putting people in prison for life, or 30 or 40 years, and if the majority are either Black or other minorities, any proposal at reform is going to have to tackle race and sentencing, where there is also the claim that race determines the sentence.

I am not sure if Bragg has got it right, but is the justice system in need of reform, and whatever you think of drug dealers, muggers and so on, how do you deal with millionaire swindlers who can employ smart lawyers who know how to skirt the boundaries of the law without breaking the law, and can any high profile 'businessman' in a city like New York who boasts about his wealth, who is loathed for whatever reason by the locals, get a fair trial?

It seems to me that Trump can bend or break the law because rich white men are not considered a threat to the person as some desperate, armed robber is, but can reform of the law protect the citizen from such crooks and swindlers, and isn't the key phrase 'Equality before the Law'?

Although it strays from the meat of this thread, this report begs the question, setting aside its facts -was six years in prison a just sentence? Or was it because the woman is Black that she was sent to prison? This seems to me the kind of sentencing that reformers want to deal with, and it ought not to be controversial.

Maybe if Trump is re-elected, it is voting that will be made illegal for people like Pamela Moses, and that must be the greater concern.

"A Memphis judge ordered a new trial for Pamela Moses, a woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-memphis-judge

Stavros:

Here is a little background information on the 3 Strikes Law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law

As for my thoughts on criminal justice reform.

I honestly believe in the maxim of "Better those 10 guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer". Even though I grew up in NYC during the crack epidemic, I think the sentencing guidelines for the possession of crack-cocaine vs the powered form was a travesty of justice and supported the revision in the law. I have always believed that drugs should be if not legalized, then decriminalized. The same goes for sex work. Although I have recently learned sex workers prefer the latter.

I also believe that non-violent drug offenders should go into rehab instead of going to jail. Finally, I think all non-violent felons who have completed their sentences, made any restitutions or paid fines connected to their original crimes, and are no longer on parole, should be able to vote again.

Having said that, criminal justice reform should not come at the sake of public safety and quality of life. That is exactly what has been happening in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and here in New York. This is happening for a variety of reasons. The first being one of the dumbest political statements/policies of all time, “Defund the police”.

The second has been the election of district attorneys in those four cities who are picking and choosing which laws they want to enforce. There has also a been change in how some of those laws are being enforced.

Finally, bail reform. In January 2020, the NYS legislature passed a bail reform law and in essence its putting criminals back on the street and preventing judges from considering public safety when making critical bail and pretrial release decisions. It didn’t help that law went into effect right before the pandemic and they didn’t postpone it for a while like they did with the ban on plastic bags.

The following is an editorial that will give you a better idea the impact the three reasons that I talked about have had on major cities and to a further extent the Democratic party and their reaction.


The U.S. Has a Violence Problem, and It’s Up to Democrats to Solve It

www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/opinion/london-breed-crime-democrats.html?


Another thing to take in consideration when it comes to criminal justice reform is the negative impact it can have on the very communities that you’re trying to help. Yes, we need to address the inequities of the criminal justice system for the poor, black, and brown people. But sometimes the people who these reforms are supposed to help, are the ones who wind up getting hurt in the end.

In summation, I don’t care if you’re rich or poor, black, or white, you commit a crime, then you should be held accountable for your actions. You should receive a fair sentence that matches the seriousness of your crime. Yes, there should be laws that prevent a 12-year-old from being sentenced to serve time an adult prison. No one should be sentenced to 30-40 years for committing a minor crime.


But there should also be laws to prevent this shit from happening. I mean figuratively and literally.

nypost.com/2022/03/02/poop-smear-suspect-cut-loose-in-alleged-hate-crime-attack/

Now I will help get your thread back on track:

How the Manhattan DA's Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled

www.yahoo.com/news/manhattan-das-investigation-donald-trump-152547072.html

Thank you, Blackchubby, for your thoughtful posts. There are clearly problems with both policing and sentencing in the UK as well as the US, though I think you would consider the UK more lenient in sentencing, in part a legacy of our membershp of the European Union. Some of the sentencing practices in the Netherlands would probably send Guv Abbott into a frenzy if he knew of them, but I suspect peope like him 'gave up' on 'Liberal Europe' years ago.

I don't have a problem with the de-criminilaziation of drugs and sex work but experiments in them have faced a lot of criticism -in the Netherlands it is claimed it actually made it easier for pimps to control the street trade, though I believe there are now few if any cafes in Amsterdam where a tourist can order a spliff with his, or her Capuccino. Mental health still remains a major source of crime, in the cases I have seen of those incidents on the NY Subway, not just that nutter in your last link, but the man who pushed a woman to her death on the tracks.

That said, certain types of crime declined owing to Covid restrictions, such as robbery, whereas 'white collar' or internet related crime rose by over 30%. These cases may not attact the same sentencing as crimes against the person, but losing one's savings can have a devastating emotional impact, while Covid restrictions may have led to a rise in cases of domestic abuse, assuming the statistics are accurate. There is a brief overview from the Office for National Statistics here-
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/11/04/u...and-and-wales/

As for defunding the police, as said before, reform is a better option; community and co-operation being better than confrontation. It seems to me that if the Police are defunded, this leaves the scene open for vigilantes, for who else is going to 'police' the law? So, ironically, 'defund the police' strikes me as being a 'Right' wing rather than a 'left-wing' cause, though maybe the 'left' consider LE to be little more than vigilantes anyway....

On the more pertinent issue of Trump, I am puzzled, a) that it has taken three years of investigation, b) that one case, criminal, is running parallel to another, civil; and c) that there is any query over the concept of 'intentionality', If a businessman claims a property is worth $4m to the tax man, and $40m to a bank, that is hardly accidental or an 'accounting error'. That said, maybe Bragg loves spltting hairs to see if they are the same or different, and his standard of proof is higher than the two prosecutors who resigned. Bringing a case to Court in the US, as in the UK,is often based on the confidence of a conviction, but without the evidence cited in your link, I can only assume the documentation is not as clear as it needs to be to win the case in Court. And from what I have read, Trump has employed smart lawyers for years who know how far the law can be stretched before it breaks. I assume a lot now depends on Letitia James.

Why it’s so hard to prosecute Donald Trump.


www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/opinions/trump-manhattan-district-attorney-prosecution-problems-williams/index.html

Again, Blackchubby, thank you for an interesting link. I am not convinced by the argument that makes it hard to prove 'criminal inent' merely because there is no record be it paper, tape or whatever. Cohen's case led to him being convicted of crimes, was he a 'lone wolf' acting without Trump's knowledge or command? And if Trump realised or knew Cohen was breaking the law, did he not have a duty to take action, or does Trump's reputation stink so much in New York that he doesn't consider such 'reputation issues' relevant to the conduct of his business?

Trump as CEO was, and presumably still is, Master of All he Surveys, one even wonders if his Children can take 'executive' decisions without his consent. The point being that the working culture of the Trump business doesn't need a paper trail to prove intent, it is a world in which what the Boss commands, the Boss gets. That two valuations of the same property can differ by such vast margins is not an 'accounting error' or negligence or any other excuse. If a Court simply ignores the actuality of the way business has been conducted in the Trump Organization, it might as well do the same with Cosa Nostra, but I guess that is how they got away with so much.

All now rests with Ms James, and the Hope Springs Eternal mindset, that Trump will one day, soon perhaps, meet his nemesis. Preferably in Court, though any conviction will probably lead to seven years of appeals. Tthe wheels of justice grind very slowly.

I read the cnn article and it makes some good points. It is a bit vague though about why this law requires a special intent that includes an intent to break the law. "...the cliche that ignorance of the law is no excuse doesn't apply cleanly." I have not followed the case and would like a little more detail on this.

I'll just point out that it's not simply a cliche that ignorance of the law is not an excuse. It is an important feature of our legal system that mistake of law generally does not exculpate whereas mistake of fact sometimes can. If you are mistaken about some relevant fact then you might not actually intend to do that which is prohibited. But if you are mistaken about what is prohibited (the law) you intend to commit the acts that are considered wrongful but just don't know they are sanctionable.

Again, I'm sure he's right, but the article should have provided more detail. I'll look it up at some point.