Is Trump the cleanest real estate developer and the cleanest politician in America?
…[T]he most investigated man in America is set to walk away from another grand jury with no charges brought against him.
“A six-month grand jury convened to hear evidence in the investigation into the business dealings of former President Donald Trump has reportedly ended, and no charges are expected to be filed as the investigation appears to be waning.
“Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently ceased sending evidence to jurors.”
I don’t know much about politicians, but I know a lot about New York real estate, having practiced real estate law in NYC for 35 years, and the answer as to real estate developers is no. Trump is in the middle of the pack. There are sleazier, and there are more ethical.
That said, Trump, like most of his peers, is almost always smart enough to stop just short of anything criminal.
I’m sure that Trump long ago learned that someone with his kind of wealth and celebrity needs to operate his businesses in an honest and legal manner. Prosecutors have been after him for decades. He’s learned that nothing illegal will go unnoticed.
And yes, this might make him among the cleanest of politicians.
He has at least one thing in common with Mitt!
Being a successful large commercial real estate developer in places like NYC and Las Vega means that at least some people needed to be bribed or nothing would get done, be they bureaurocrats, officials, labor union people or whomever. That said, it’s clear that Trump must have always been careful and smart about that aspect of the business. He’s obviously no more guilty than anyone else in that arena. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Trump knows where the line runs, and walks an inch on the safe side.
funny how that works
https://nypost.com/2022/04/21/gopers-ask-if-russian-linked-to-hunter-biden-sanctioned/
Why is it that when Mitt was mentioned this quote popped into my head:
“Hypocricy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It has been said, and wisely (in my rarely humble opinion), that in Dee Cee the problem is not so much what people do that’s illegal, but what people do that’s entirely legal.
I have no problem transferring that maxim to New York real estate, as many of the responses preceding this one very ably point out. Yes, “Trump knows where the line runs, and walks an inch on the safe side.” — Chuck (6:48 pm)
He’s a boor and a lout, not necessarily in that order, but he “knows where the line runs.”
Bet the shelf life on this grand jury story will have a half-life measurable in nanoseconds.
They’ve got him now! Well, not now exactly, but next time for sure.
Trump does appear to run a sensible, legal business operation. That his chosen field often requires victimless criminal activity (aka: bribes, payoffs, etc.) it is likely he has engaged in some of this. Probably through “plausible deniability” means, mules, and other functionaries. Note also that the recipients of any questionable payments are likely engaged in illegal activity themselves and so have an incentive to keep their mouth shut.
besides the regular payoff pickup
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/05/02/beyond-a-slush-fund-biden-33-billion-ukraine-package-includes-8-8-billion-to-establish-state-dept-global-disinformation-bureau-and-international-civil-asset-forfeiture/
I’d heard of Trump for decades of course without taking much interest in the details of his business dealings. By the time he ran for President I figured that someone who brought that much attention to himself for that long without any significant legal scandal knew how to stay clean legally even if not “perfect” ethically.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Forget the line. Trump knows where the bodies are buried. Small group of very rich and powerful. No one needed him throwing mud in every direction. This was never going to happen.
Harassment pure and simple by the morally compromised, vindictive and terrified Democratic Party, whose absolute need to distract from their own crimes is never-ending and never-yielding.
My guess is if we looked at dems like we looked at Trump, there would be a lot of bullet marked walls in DC, NY, LA, and other urban shit holes.
Take into account Trump has burned bridges with plenty of insiders (like Cohen, his lawyer!) who’d like to get even or ‘make a deal’ with prosecutors and still no one has touched him. His many business ventures are a well stocked lake for political fishing expeditions. Definitely the least corrupt politician we’ve seen in many a year.
For certain he’s no ham sandwich.
“Not criminal” is an exceptionally low bar. I don’t know when we, as a culture, internalized the idea that criminality was the line of demarcation between “good” people and “bad” people. I first remember it during the Clinton administration, when Al Gore had “no controlling legal authority” and Hillary’s shady financial dealings were said to be A-OK because she wasn’t criminally charged. The same thing happened with the home-brew server in 2016. No indictment, no problem! – At least according to Democrats.
Trump’s great advantage is that Democrats seem to have interalized the inverse as well. To them, Trump is a bad man, so he must be a criminal. Whether or not one thinks that Trump is a bad man, that logic is a non sequitur. But it blows up in their faces. Everytime a prosecutor opens a half-baked investigation into Trump, and the press crows that the walls are closing in, Trump is only strengthened when the case is later closed without charges. As neo alludes to here, people start to think that Trump must be the most innocent man in America. (And frankly, there’s something to that. If there was literally anything that that could be proven against Trump beyond a reasonable doubt, I think he would have been charged already.)
The problem is that avoiding indictment is not a particularly compelling qualification for office. As one who really does not want Trump to be the Republican nominee in 2024, I do want Democrats to stop this nonsense with prosecutors. I doubt they will, though. If Trump does end up being reelected in 2024, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
But you gotta admit, IT WORKS!
There’s still tons of people who STILL think he’s Putin’s stooge.
(And if these wonderful people were somehow to be convinced that he isn’t and never was, they’d STILL think he’s the DEVIL and deserves everything’s he got—and everything he will get. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”, of course there is!!)
BTW, Romney was the Devil, too (or at least Adolf-able).
Next Devil coming up….DeSantis!! (but of course)…though maybe before we get to him (even if we’re already there), the Democrats will give several conservative Supreme Court justices “the treatment”…
This war is all about russia gate, precipitated by the most corrupt gang
Judging from Sussman’s abject performance thus far, it’s “The Gang that Couldn’t Lie Straight”.
Interesting how many NeverTrumpers this topic brought out.
Steve McIntyre has something to say about corruption and Ukraine.
Trump was the most effective American POTUS in the last 100 years. And the comments here are by NeverTrumpers?
What ails you all? You hate success and doing the right things because someone has hair not to your liking, and Tweets when no “legitimate” MSM source would report him accurately?
There has never been a national political figure who has been smeared, slandered, persecuted, prosecuted, spied upon, and abused as Trump has. Regardless of whether one loves or hates him or somewhere in between, I don’t think anyone can honestly disagree with that. The entire establishment has thrown every dirty trick at him and backed them with billions in funding, bushels of ink and pixels, and the full power (legal and illegal) of the government bureaucracies. The FBI, CIA, NSA and DOJ spied on him illegally and comprehensively. They’ve pored over and through every single phone call, conversation, email, text and document of his (and his associates) over the last decade. He even gave them full access to everything from his White House by waiving executive privilege.
They got zilch. So they made up stuff. And they couldn’t even take him down with their lies, slanders and smears.
It’s an interesting exercise to imagine how many years in prison would result if even 10% of that effort were directed against any prominent Democrat of our lifetimes. Hillary would likely rack up over 1000 years worth of sentences. Seriously. (And that assumes they didn’t tie her to any of the dead bodies.)
Anyone have a count on how many different indictments and other attempts to crucify Trump in court have occurred since he became a serious candidate (say, 2015)? And how many, if any, have found anything clearly more significant than basic fines?
}}} “Not criminal” is an exceptionally low bar. I don’t know when we, as a culture, internalized the idea that criminality was the line of demarcation between “good” people and “bad” people.
“People”? No. Politicians? Yes. I think THAT has been around for the better part of two centuries of national political activities, frankly.
One of the issues with a lack of term limits is the capacity to Get Away with more and more.
Our Founders specifically tried to prevent the existence of a permanent political class. We really do need to implement some form of term limits, and strongly discourage anyone who is out of office to consider ever returning to office. As in, each successively attained “term” in ANY office, cumulatively, requires you to gain an additional percentage point to win ANY future office or additional term:
Elected Dogcatcher, 1st term, 50%
Dogcatcher, 2nd term, 51%
City Commissioner, 1st term, 52%
City Commissioner, 2nd term, 53%
State Representative, 1st term, 54%
State Senator, 1st term, 55%
US Senator, 1st term 56%
US Senator, 2nd term 57% (term limit kicks in after 2nd)
US PotUS, 1st term, 58%
Dogcatcher, 3rd term, 59%
County Commissioner, 1st term, 60%
😛
This would deter people from a lifetime of crime as politicians.
}}} I don’t think anyone can honestly disagree with that.
I will guarantee you there are a whole array of Useless Idiots on the Left who would disagree with it and believe it was utterly true.
Cicero:
I don’t think they’re NeverTrumpers, I think most if not all actually voted for him but just don’t like him. That’s a guess on my part, of course, but it’s my impression.
I just thought it was interesting that the majority of the comments seemed to come from those who do not like him and will not vote for him.
As for myself, I am certain that the 2020 election was stolen but I think Trump might be too old in 2024. DeSantis has to convince a lot of people that he is as resistant to “Growing in Office” as Trump was. He is working on it.
Yes desantis is more focused, he doesn’t get distracted by tangents, like trump does. now anybody worth a farthing is going to get attacked, I know romney is the exception that proves the rule, the extent to which they corrupted the media, the legal system, even the medical establishment to drive him out of office is rather breathtaking,
I speak as someone who was initially skeptical about trump, hisvaingloriousness,
his bandwagon against the iraq war, the silly fixation about the birth certificate put me off, I voted for cruz in the primary, fwiw
I hope my comment about Trump possibly not obtaining “perfect” ethics is not construed as me being “Never Trump”. Indeed I put “perfect” in quotes because I think it is difficult (or impossible) even for good people to always be perfect. And especially for someone like Trump who has been playing in big arenas for 40-50 years.
We may not have had an ethically “perfect” President since George Washington. And even George did chop down that cherry tree.
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