The Trump fraud case highlights the use of a broad law in novel ways to target Trump and only Trump
Andrew C. McCarthy is no Trump fan, but he certainly recognizes prosecutorial and judicial overreach when he sees it:
The ruling by a New York State judge on Tuesday, putting Trump out of business in the Big Apple, the longtime center of his real-estate empire, illustrates two things.
First, to what will be the surprise of absolutely no one, Trump has a strained relationship with the truth. Put less charitably, he lies. …
Second, while the civil law, like the criminal law, makes fraud illegal, the New York State statute at issue in Judge Arthur F. Engoron’s 35-page ruling is nightmarishly broad and draconian.
Executive Law 65(12) outlaws engaging in “repeated” and “persistent” fraud in business dealings. Well, okay, but if one engaged in such an egregious pattern of behavior, surely we’d expect to find some victims, right? At least one victim? I mean, if you’re going to incinerate a multibillion-dollar international conglomerate, shouldn’t there be, you know, a bank that lost, if not millions in depositor savings, at least a few bucks? Especially if, as in James’s case, at issue are more than a dozen years of financial dealings.
But here: There’s no victim. No harm to any creditor or investor. No bank or insurance company brought in to say, “Donald Trump ruined us … or at least profoundly damaged us … or maybe, you know, shaved a few shekels off some middle-manager’s annual bonus.”
A case obviously brought against Trump in order to destroy him, a case that involves facts that indicate it would not be brought against anyone else. Pure political revenge, and transparently so.
McCarthy adds:
In tone and substance, [the opinion of the judge expresses] real venom. I was a prosecutor for many years, so I can’t say I’ve never seen such overt judicial loathing of a defendant and/or his counsel. But on those rare occasions, one usually finds sociopathic defendants who’ve committed heinous crimes, or lawyers whose tactics skirt the lines of suborning perjury and the like. Here, there is nothing like that. There is just … Trump. …
Putting aside the lack of harm, Engoron and James are not just stripping Trump of his earnings. They are putting him out of business. Not just him but his two adult sons, some other Trump Organization executives, and the Trump Organization, including the array of entities operating under its umbrella. Without proof of any crime or any damage, New York State is imposing the corporate death penalty.
McCarthy makes a very interesting point at the end of his piece:
Whatever you think of Donald Trump, the existential punishment is wildly out of proportion with the negligible harm. For a non-crime, in which no one suffered harm — in which misrepresentations were made not to saps but to sophisticated financial actors who do their own due diligence on valuations — progressive Democrats are closing down a long-established business of a man who, before he became their political enemy, was celebrated as an iconic New York real estate broker.
This raises two questions: First, how many businesses would emerge unscathed, under the law as New York interprets it, from the kind of examination Trump endured due only to unabashed partisanship? Second, why conduct business in New York if progressive bullies reserve the right to annihilate you over trifles?
In other words, this case could have a chilling effect on business investment in New York. It certainly should, for anyone paying attention. My guess, though, is that most Democrats would think this is only ever going to happen to Trump or his supporters, and that’s perfectly fine because they deserve that and worse. Those Democrats think the crocodile will never circle back to eat them.
Trump’s lawyers say they will fight this:
According to Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba, Trump intends to appeal the judge’s “fundamentally flawed” ruling immediately. Trump might also ask for an immediate trial suspension.
I hope it is granted, but if the appeals court is as biased as the trial court, it won’t be.
More:
The decision effectively barred New York-based businesses controlled by prominent members of the Trump Organization from conducting business in the state by removing their company certificates.
According to Engoron, the decision to revoke business certificates affects any company controlled or owned by Trump, his sons Donald, Jr. and Eric, and former employees of the Trump Organization Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney.
That would spell the end of operations for renowned Trump properties, including the Midtown Manhattan-based Trump Tower, the Westchester County-based Trump National Golf Club, and the 927-foot-tall Wall Street office building known as The Trump Building.
Together, the companies provide jobs for hundreds of individuals and account for a sizeable chunk of the holdings of the Trump Organization.
These holdings are all in New York; the court has no power over holdings in other jurisdictions. Again, I wonder how many people will stop investing in New York and will go elsewhere. My reply to McCarthy’s question, “how many businesses would emerge unscathed, under the law as New York interprets it, from the kind of examination Trump endured?” would be “Virtually none.”
Dianne Feinstein dies at 90
RIP.
Feinsteins career was “filled with firsts,” as this article reminds us:
She was the first woman president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first woman mayor of San Francisco, and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
She was a senator for 30 years, a Democrat “stalwart,” as some articles have dubbed her. That was certainly the case; she only seemed a tad less to the left than most of her Democrat colleagues because they moved so far from the Democrat norms of the 90s.
Lately she had become very frail and obviously infirm. Her husband had died in 2022, and I’m going to assume that took a toll, too. There’s been plenty of speculation about her replacement, as well. That’s why this sort of article seems preposterous to me:
There is a phenomenon in politics whereby if someone is old and infirm but remains alive for a while in a diminished state, they can almost persuade people that they are immune to death.
So it was with John McCain, who died at 81 from a vicious brain cancer that left no hope of recovery, but whose actual death still sent a deep shudder through the political world. So, too, was it with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death at 87 after multiple battles with cancer shattered her admirers and pitched the Supreme Court rightward.
And so it was this week with Dianne Feinstein …
Actually, all those people were ill for quite some time before death, and what to do when their time came had been a near-constant topic of conversation while they were still alive. That was certainly true of Feinstein.
Many people thought that perhaps Kamala Harris would be replacing her, since Newsom – who gets to appoint Feinstein’s successor, at least until the next election – has specified, a la Joe Biden, that it would be a black woman, and since the party would dearly love to remove Harris from the second-in-command position. I have long said it won’t be Harris, because she would never accept such a demotion. Now it seems even less likely to be Harris, because Newsom has declared that he’ll appoint someone temporary, just until the 2024 election determines a successor:
Newsom’s choices all run political risks.
A handful of Black women in office have been floated as possibilities, including Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell.
Lee and others lashed out at Newsom earlier in the month after he indicated he would select a caretaker instead of picking from the current slate of candidates.
“The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election,” Lee tweeted.
Not that any Democrat in the state will stop voting for Democrats, or for Newsom himself if he happens to end up being the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2024.
Open thread 9/29/23
News you probably can’t use:
Biden impeachment hearings begin
The Democrat line is that there is no evidence worth paying attention to – which seems to mean there is no notarized and witnessed contract Biden signed that states, “I accept this bribe in exchange for giving the following favors to the following country.”
Not quite the standard of proof they would use for Trump and his family, but no matter. Consistency is not required when you have the MSM in your corner.
Meanwhile, we have things like this:
Byron Donalds ROASTS the Biden Crime family live on TV while showing shocking text messages proving corruption:
“To my colleagues on the other side — we are going to start talking about evidence now.” pic.twitter.com/Os1LIvl9Hz
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 28, 2023
Further notes on the anti-racism Canadian struggle session
Have you ever read Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery,” written in 1948? If you haven’t, SPOILER alert: the plot involves a tradition in a seemingly-normal town in which a person is chosen by lot to be stoned to death by the other residents. No reason is ever given. The process is merely described, in a narrative in which the Norman Rockwell-esque turns gradually into the horrific.
I’ve written two posts already about the struggle session atmosphere to which former Toronto school principal Richard Bilkszto was subjected during a 2021 anti-racism training session in Canada (see this and this). That’s what put me in mind of the Shirley Jackson story. Bilkszto ended up suing the Toronto School Board District for what happened during the session and afterwards at the Board’s hands, but shortly after the suit was filed he killed himself. It now seems more apparent to me, after reading some further articles on the subject, why the incident had such a devastating effect.
The first training session was just the beginning, although it was horrible. It was followed by some sources scrambling to show their own virtue by condemning Bilkszto, or protecting themselves from similar attack by fearfully keeping silent [emphasis mine]:
Bilkszto was particularly devastated by the fact that some of his TDSB bosses, whom he’d naively expected to defend him (or at least have the courtesy to say nothing at all), eagerly piled on with the public shaming meted out by their external DEI consultant.
On Twitter, Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, then the TDSB’s Executive Superintendent, thanked Ojo-Thompson and her KOJO colleague for “modelling the discomfort [that] administrators” — i.e., Bilkszto — “may need to experience in order to disrupt ABR [anti-Black racism].”
For good measure, Robinson Petrazzini also suggested that Bilkszto (whom she did not name, but was the obvious subject of her Tweet) was allied with the forces of “resistance” to anti-racism, and so was abetting “harm to Black students and families.”
Bilkszto personally asked Robinson Petrazzini to delete the Tweet. She did so only eight months later, and only after receiving a letter from Bilkszto’s lawyer warning her that she’d be sued unless she did so.
According to Bilkszto, his other bosses also refused to support him, instead attacking him for his “male white privilege.” And yet, once Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the TDSB, seeking $785,000 damages for the emotional and reputational harm he’d endured, those same administrators now began claiming that it was Ojo-Thompson who’d gone rogue.
I imagine it was especially disconcerting to Bilkszto to learn how fragile were the bonds he’d forged during his lengthy working life, how eager people he’d previously trusted were to distance themselves from him and throw a few stones themselves. When a community of colleagues appears to turn against a person or to be silent while he is persecuted, the experience generally has a powerful effect, adding betrayal to the original injury. As a liberal who may have continued up to that point to believe that the others shared his values, he probably experienced a very rude and shattering awakening.
Also, the insults launched against Bilkszto during the training session by Ojo-Thompson were even more extensive than reported in the other articles I’ve read prior to this. Here’s more of what is alleged to have been done [emphasis mine]:
“We [Canadians] are stepping on necks, we are kneeling on necks, we are Derek Chauvin-ing a whole group of people… Patriarchy is killing you, capitalism is killing you, and White supremacy is taking your soul, but what do I know?” Thompson said, according to a complaint obtained by Fox News Digital.
Ojo-Thompson proceeded to call Canada “the bastion of White supremacy and colonialism,” according to the suit. …
“I am telling you what the facts are and the truth is,” Ojo-Thompson said, while claiming Canada was worse than the U.S. in regard to embedded “White supremacy,” according to the suit.
After Bilkszto interjected, disagreeing with Ojo-Thompson in her assessment that Canada was more racist than the U.S., he was promptly reprimanded for his “Whiteness,” according to the suit.
“This is why we are in the place we are in. We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your Whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people? Is that what you are doing? I think that’s what you’re doing,” Ojo-Thompson said, according to the suit.
Another trainer at KOJO, interjected, claiming Bilkszto was an “apologist” for racism, in front of all his administrative peers, according to the suit. Bilkszto’s superiors and colleagues did not intervene when the alleged racial comments against his “Whiteness” were made.
Ojo-Thompson proceeded “to publicly humiliate Bilkszto and make an example of him,” going so far as to liken him to a “‘weed’ that needed to be cut down,” the lawsuit said.
So we have the leader, Ojo-Thompson, taking an aggressive tone and setting Bilkszto up as the white male villain. As is common in these trainings, any argument or attempt to defend oneself is labeled as more racism. This was done in a public work setting in front of peers, and as far as I can tell, Bilkszto was the only person who objected and the only person so treated. And then his colleagues – whom he almost certainly had previously considered friends – were silent, probably afraid that they would be the next victims and that Ojo-Thompson and her associate would get out that weed-whacker and use it on them. So he was the designated sacrificial lamb who would save the group from condemnation.
It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to that sort of tyranny and expose oneself to the possibility of such an attack, especially in the workplace where the consequences can be serious and financial. Most people will not do it.
But that wasn’t all that happened to Bilkszto. There were other professional consequences, and a further struggle session where Bilkszto was targeted again as well as mocked [emphasis mine]:
Bilkszto was then called in for professional reprimand in relation to his ideological disagreement with Ojo-Thompson. When Bilkszto attended the next KOJO training, Ojo-Thompson attacked him again unprompted, while laughing at one point, according to the suit.
“This is the operation of White supremacy and you [the audience of colleagues, that is] saw it with your own eyes,” Ojo-Thompson said, according to the lawsuit.
“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ojo-Thomson said about Bilkszto’s interruption, per the suit.
“It is rare that when teaching something that you actually get a real life of the concept unfolding right before everyone’s eyes and ears, and we had that privilege last week, so I want to open by going back to the concept of resistance,” Ojo-Thomson said, according to the suit.
“One of the ways that White supremacy is upheld… is through resistance and like I said, as I began to speak earlier we had, I am so lucky [*laughs*], who would have thought my luck would have showed up so well last week, that we got perfect evidence of a wonderful example of resistance that all of you got to bear witness to, and we are going to talk about it, because it doesn’t get better than this,” she continued, according to the suit.
Power and sadism and racism from Ojo-Thompson, and no one in the audience willing to stand up and call it what it was.
Here is a short bio of Ojo-Thompson. And here you can find even more details of her remarks to Bilkszto, including a series of audio clips of some of the exchanges at the trainings.
Also, some later remarks Bilkszto made about his own life:
“To me, being gay is a part of me,” Bilkszto said in the interview. “It’s not my identity. It’s not something I choose to put out there all the time. As a matter of fact, if people were having a conversation about, you know, ‘I don’t think there should be gay marriage,’ I’m not even offended by that if people are making rational arguments—as long as they’re not being homophobic.”
He added: “It’s about the whole cancelling and not allowing for free speech, free debate, and all those types of things. I’m a big free speech proponent.” Bilkszto said he thought Chris Rufo, the conservative activist who built his online following by spotlighting the excesses of wokeness, was spot on.
Sounds like a very reasonable guy. Bilkszto apparently had a loving family, and had previously been highly respected in his job.
While it’s certainly true that not everyone would have committed suicide in the face of this kind of pressure, the stress was formidable. I am convinced that, but for the chain of events that was set in motion by the training, Bilkszto would be alive today.
NOTE: You can read the entire story “The Lottery” here. It’s quite short.
On last night’s debate
No, I didn’t watch it. I don’t like political debates even when they’re handled fairly well, and I knew this one wouldn’t be handled well. It was destined to be a shouting match with stupid gotcha questions, and from the descriptions I’ve read, that’s pretty much what it turned out to be.
That sort of thing makes everyone look bad – the candidates, the station, the moderators, and the party leaders who agreed to the format. Why oh why do something that self-destructive?
Stephen Kruiser has a theory, and it’s not a bad one:
The big question then is: Why is the GOP still letting this crap happen?
Let’s look at that. This is all GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s doing. The woman with perhaps the worst track record of any GOP chair in history. The party has hemorrhaged governorships and seats in Congress since she’s been in charge.
Who was her most prominent supporter when she was running for a fourth term after presiding over three elections that were unmitigated disasters for the GOP?
Oh yeah, Donald Trump.
At this point, I’m beginning to think that this is all by design. Trump and McDaniel struck a deal: he’d help her reelection bid; she’d set up some of the worst debates in GOP primary history and he’d avoid them. Yes, I believe that he would be opting out even if he didn’t have a big lead in the polls.
This way, the other candidates can endure the pontificating and inane questions from the moderators, none of which will make them look good, and Trump can hit the tanning bed, unscathed.
It surprised me when Trump endorsed McDaniel. It surprised me when she was re-elected. I think her chairmanship has been a disaster.
No one can look good in these debates; they are debasing experiences.
Open thread 9/28/23
Tonight at 9: the second Republican debate
Here’s a thread to discuss it.
Roundup
(1) About that wire transfer to Joe Biden’s address in 2019.
(2) Kevin McCarthy is demanding border control prior to passing a continuing resolution:
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is going all-in on border issues as he takes a second shot this week at passing a GOP-only short-term funding bill that would pair an extension of government funding with a swath of border policy changes.
McCarthy is racing against a competing continuing resolution (CR) unveiled in the Senate on Tuesday and a Saturday government shutdown deadline. …
In addition to the border measures, McCarthy said the bill would also cut discretionary funding for duration of a CR to a top-line spending level of $1.471 trillion — the number from the House GOP’s “Limit, Save, Grow” partisan debt limit bill from earlier this year that was consistent with fiscal 2022 levels. Republicans in a conference meeting last week also discussed creating a commission to examine the national debt.
(3) William Jacobson on the Trump fraud decision. From a comment there:
Lenders are responsible for doing their own due diligence. The idea that an owner can just make up a number and a lender accepts it at face value is laughable.
Basically, this court is declaring all negotiations to be illegal, since there is only one fair price and any discussions of prices other than the one true fair price are fraud.
This is crazy.
(4) Andrew C. McCarthy writes about Hunter Biden’s suit claiming that Giuliani “hacked” his hard drive:
It used to be that Hunter, while caviling about the invasion of his privacy, would not admit that the infamous laptop data actually belonged to him.
Now, in his latest round of vexatious litigation — this time, a lawsuit against 2020 Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as well as Robert Costello, Giuliani’s former lawyer and fellow former federal prosecutor — Team Biden’s position is marginally less incoherent. …
While acknowledging that the data is his, the ne’er-do-well first son does not admit — though, cutely, does not deny — that he gave Delaware computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac the infamous laptop from hell on which the information was stored.
Why play this silly game? Because Hunter’s lawsuits risibly allege that his stored digital information was hacked — if not by the Russians, then by Mac Isaac, Giuliani, Costello, former Trump aide Steve Bannon, and who knows who else.
Implicit in the concept of hacking — computer theft — is that access to data was obtained without the owner’s permission.
Hence, if Hunter admits that he brought a damaged laptop to Mac Isaac, with the precise understanding that Mac Isaac would gain access to its data for purposes of extraction and preservation, then it becomes numbingly obvious that the stored digital information was not hacked.
(5) Biden made a cameo appearance on the UAW picket line.
The Biden documents investigation and differential treatment
They’re investigating Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents:
The federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents prior to becoming president has grown into a sprawling examination of Obama-era security protocols and internal White House processes, with investigators so far interviewing scores of witnesses, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Federal prosecutors and FBI agents from special counsel Robert Hur’s office have been interviewing witnesses for nearly nine months, targeting an expansive constellation of former aides — from high-level advisers to executive assistants and at least one White House attorney. Several sources estimated that as many as 100 witnesses have already been interviewed, with interviews conducted as recently as last week and some witnesses asked to return for follow-up interviews.
That’s an ABC story, and note the language. I used the term “mishandling,” but they use the even less pejorative term “handling.” The message in those paragraphs is not only to norm what happened, but also to give the impression that any investigation will be mega-thorough and extremely dogged in its pursuit of the truth. Cynics among us (and that’s most of us) don’t quite buy it.
Next paragraph:
Sources who were present for some of the interviews, including witnesses, told ABC News that authorities had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness from Biden’s vice presidency, but that — based on what was said in the interviews — it seemed to them that the improper removal of classified documents from Biden’s office when he left the White House in 2017 was more likely a mistake than a criminal act.
Is anyone surprised at this basically foreordained conclusion?
The rest of the article goes on and on about how thorough the investigation is, and then contrasts the cooperation of the Biden forces with authorities versus Trump’s alleged lack of cooperation. Unless I missed it, there is no discussion of the difference between a Vice President or senator – Biden at the time the documents were taken – having such documents, versus a president (Trump) possessing them.
There’s also this:
[Special counsel] Hur has vowed to conduct a “fair, impartial, and dispassionate” investigation, following the facts “thoroughly” and “without fear or favor.”
So now we all believe that’s the way it has been and will be, right?
Democrats will contend it is so. The right believes the opposite. But it’s the people in the middle who interest me. I can’t help but wonder whether many of them will see the disparity in treatment and agree that Trump is being persecuted and Biden let off easy. That could end up being reflected at the ballot box in 2024, because I think there still are many Americans who do believe in equal justice, and don’t see it happening these days.
I guess Michelle Obama must be a riveting speaker …
… if she’s in fact making close to $750K for a one-hour speech, as reported in this article:
The 59-year-old former lawyer spoke to an estimated 5,000 attendees on how to “push past self-doubt while discussing the importance of inclusivity and diversity” at the annual Bits and Pretzels forum in Munich — a start-up event held on the sidelines of the annual Oktoberfest beer festival, according to the event website.
For her speech, Obama was paid 700,000 euros, which is roughly equivalent to $741,000, two unidentified sources close to the conference organizers told the Daily Mail.
Organizers told the outlet that the former first lady “topped the list” of people whom participants wanted to hear from “year after year.”
That comes out to be $12,350 per minute, and about $206 per second.
No doubt the speech was Churchillian.
These sorts of fees are one of the reasons politics is so corrupt these days – or one of the ways in which it’s so corrupt. And Michelle Obama isn’t even a politician – yet. Some say she will end up as the Democrats’ nominee in 2024. I have my doubts.