Screw You, Republicans, and Your Stupid, Useless Prayers
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – October 26, 2023
Here we go again. At least 18 people were killed and upwards of 60 people injured in Lewiston, Maine, late Wednesday evening. This is the 565th mass shootings that has been reported in 2023 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The senseless violence has also tapped into another fruitless round of Republican leaders issuing “thoughts and prayers” to the families of victims while continuing to pocket large donations from gun lobbyists.
In the last decade, the National Rifle Association has spent more than $37 million on its political lobbying, with GOP legislators reaping the bulk of it, including Senators Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell, according to data from OpenSecrets. Meanwhile, the money behind “gun rights” lobbying groups has dwarfed gun control efforts every year dating back to 1998.
Their unbroken influence over the political right has swept votes on issues ranging from bans on assault weapons to high capacity magazines, both of which Maine’s own Senator Susan Collins voted against.
Like Collins, other Republicans are once again offering us nothing but their thoughts and prayers.
Recent changes to the House’s leadership are unlikely to change circumstances, either. Just last week, now-Speaker Mike Johnson entertained a meeting with a group against gun control legislation, Women for Gunrights.
Roughly 63 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with U.S. gun laws, according to a 2023 Gallup poll, which noted that just 54 percent of Republicans were satisfied with their own party-driven policies—a five point decrease from 2022.
“Praying for everyone’s safety in Maine, and for the victims and their families,” tweeted Florida Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost. “But unlike some in Congress, I don’t believe the only thing we can do about gun violence is pray. Every minute our leaders fail to act = more people dead to senseless gun violence.”
Clarence Thomas failed to fully repay $267,000 loan for luxury RV, inquiry finds
Martin Pengelly in Washington – October 25, 2023
The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas failed to repay much – or possibly all – of a “sweetheart deal” to borrow more than $267,000 to buy a luxury motor home, a Senate committee found.
The existence of the $267,230 loan, made by the businessman Anthony Welters in 1999 and forgiven in 2008, was first reported by the New York Times. On Wednesday, the Times quoted Michael Hamersley, a tax lawyer and congressional expert witness, as saying “‘this was, in short, a sweetheart deal’ that made no logical sense from a business perspective”.
The original RV story came amid a torrent of reports, many by ProPublica, about alleged ethical lapses by Thomas, a conservative appointed in 1991 who has failed to declare numerous lavish gifts from rightwing donors.
Thomas denies wrongdoing but the reports, particularly concerning the mega-donor Harlan Crow, alongside stories about other justices’ undeclared gifts and windfalls, have prompted questions about impartiality on the conservative-dominated court and calls for ethics reform.
Senate Democrats have proposed such reform but it has little chance of success, given Republican opposition. The chief justice, John Roberts, has resisted calls to testify.
Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judges but in practice govern themselves.
In the case of the luxury RV – a Prevost Marathon Le Mirage XL – Welters loaned Thomas the money in 1999. The businessman told the Times: “I loaned a friend money, as I have other friends and family. We’ve all been on one side or the other of that equation.”
But on Wednesday the Senate finance committee said it had now seen documents that showed an annual interest rate of 7.5% but no obligation to pay down the principal, only annual interest payments of $20,042. The committee also said it had seen a note from Thomas promising to abide by the terms.
“None of the documents reviewed by committee staff indicated that Thomas ever made payments to Welters in excess of the annual interest on the loan,” the panel said.
As described by the Times, when the loan came due, in 2004, Welters granted a 10-year extension “despite the fact that the previous year Justice Thomas had collected $500,000 of a $1.5m advance for his autobiography, according to his financial disclosures. Then, in late 2008, Mr Welters simply forgave the balance of the loan, according to the committee’s report.”
A contemporaneous note, the committee said, showed Welters saying Thomas’s “interest only” payments exceeded the value of the RV. But evidence did not back up this claim, with Welters having given investigators only one copy of a canceled check from Thomas, for the annual interest amount.
Hamersley told the Times: “No bank behaving in a commercially reasonable, arms-length manner would have given that loan in the first place. And a bank doesn’t just say, ‘Oh gee, you’ve paid a lot in interest – we’re good, no need to pay back what you actually owe.’”
Hamersley also said the Internal Revenue Service would treat any such gift as taxable income.
Ron Wyden, the Democratic chair of the Senate finance committee, said: “Now we know that Justice Thomas had up to $267,230 in debt forgiven and never reported it on his ethics forms.
“Regular Americans don’t get wealthy friends to forgive huge amounts of debt … Justice Thomas should inform the committee exactly how much debt was forgiven and whether he properly reported the loan forgiveness on his tax returns and paid all taxes owed.”
Calls for Thomas to resign, or to be impeached and removed, have proliferated. Such outcomes remain vastly unlikely but on Wednesday Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, said Thomas had reached “a new low”, the justice going “about business as usual on the supreme court while skirting all ethics standards to cash in on his wealthy friends – to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Justice Thomas clearly views his position on our nation’s highest court as a chance to upgrade his own lifestyle with no consequences. As becomes more clear by the day, he is unfit to serve on our high court. Justice Thomas must resign.”
The Senate Finance Committee found Clarence Thomas never paid back a $267,230 loan from a rich friend.
The New York Times previously reported Thomas used the loan to buy a luxury RV.
The committee said Thomas never reported the forgiven loan on ethics filings.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spent $267,230 on a luxury RV with a loan from a wealthy friend, but never fully paid it back, the Senate Finance Committee said Wednesday.
The New York Times first reported on the loan in August, revealing Thomas paid $267,230 for a Prevost Marathon RV in 1999, or eight years after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. The Times found that while Thomas had told people he had saved up to make the purchase, it was actually financed, in part, by Anthony Welters, a wealthy healthcare industry executive and close friend of the justice.
The Senate Finance Committee launched an inquiry following the Times’ reporting and published its findings on Wednesday. The committee said Thomas paid interest payments on the loan but never paid a “substantial portion” of the loan, and possibly never paid back any portion of the principal.
Documents reviewed by the committee included a handwritten note from 2008 in which Welters told Thomas he would no longer seek further payments on the loan. The committee said the note also said Thomas had only made interest payments on the loan.
While the committee said additional documents related to the loan may exist, nothing they reviewed suggested Thomas ever made payments that exceeded the annual interest.
“Justice Thomas did not disclose this forgiven debt on his ethics filings, raising questions as to whether Thomas properly reported the associated income on his tax returns,” the committee staff said.
A representative for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
In a statement provided to Insider, Welters acknowledged the loan and said he believed it had been “satisfied.”
“Because the loan was made 25 years ago and completed 15 years ago, bank statements – which I sought – no longer exist. While not a tangible record, I continue to put stock in my contemporaneous belief,” Welters said.
“As anyone who has borrowed from or lent to family or friends, it’s simply not the same as a bank,” he added. “Bottom line, I lent a friend money. The loan was properly papered. The loan, I felt, was satisfactorily repaid.”
Welters previously told the Times the loan had been “satisfied” and acknowledged that Thomas used the money to “buy a recreational vehicle, which is a passion of his.” He did not answer additional questions about how much Thomas had paid back on the loan.
Editors note: This story has been updated to include comment received from Anthony Welters after publication.
Most of Justice Thomas’ $267,000 loan for an RV seems to have been forgiven, Senate Democrats say
Mark Sherman – October 25, 2023
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas joins other members of the Supreme Court as they pose for a new group portrait, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. All or most of a $267,000 loan obtained by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to buy a high-end motorcoach appears to have been forgiven, raising tax and ethics questions, according to a new report by Senate Democrats. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — All or most of a $267,000 loan obtained by Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas to buy a high-end motorcoach appears to have been forgiven, raising tax and ethics questions, according to a new report by Senate Democrats.
Anthony “Tony” Welters, a longtime friend of Thomas who made the loan in 1999, forgave the debt after nine years of what he called interest-only payments, says the report, which was released Wednesday by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee.
The loan’s existence was first reported during the summer by the New York Times. Committee Democrats undertook their inquiry following the Times’ story.
Thomas, 75, has been at the center of a heightened focus on ethics at the Supreme Court over his undisclosed travel and other ties with wealthy conservative supporters. The court, the only part of the federal judiciary with a formal code of conduct, is debating whether to adopt an ethics code and, in recent months, three justices have voiced their support for such a move.
Thomas borrowed the money from Welters, a healthcare executive, to buy a 40-foot refitted tour bus in which he tours the country with his wife, Ginni. Thomas has talked about staying in Walmart parking lots and RV parks, which are “what the neighborhoods used to be like.”
At the time of the loan, Thomas said in a handwritten note on his Supreme Court letterhead that agreements to pay interest of 7.5% a year and repay the money in five years, the report says. In 2004, the time to repay the loan was extended until 2014.
Documents voluntarily provided by Welters to the committee show that he forgave the loan in 2008, the report says. Welters gave the committee a copy of just one payment of $20,042 that Thomas made, in 2000.
“Welters forgave the balance of the loan to Thomas in recognition of the payments made by Thomas which Welters characterized as interest only payments that exceeded the amount of the original loan,” the report says. Nine years of interest-only payments would total roughly $180,000, considerably less than the loan amount. Welters did not explain the discrepancy.
Forgiven or canceled debt counts as income for tax purposes, the report says. In addition, Thomas has never included forgiven debt in his annual financial disclosures.
“Justice Thomas should inform the committee exactly how much debt was forgiven and whether he properly reported the loan forgiveness on his tax returns and paid all taxes owed,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the committee chairman, said in a statement.
There was no immediate response from Thomas to a request made through a court spokeswoman.
A series of reports from the investigative news site ProPublica revealed that Thomas has for years accepted, but not disclosed, luxury trips and other hospitality from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.
Crow also purchased the house in Georgia where Thomas’s mother continues to live and paid for two years of private school tuition for a child raised by the Thomases.
Earlier this year, Thomas did report three private trips he took at Crow’s expense in 2022, after the federal judiciary changed its guidelines for reporting travel. He did not report travel from earlier years.
ProPublica reported that Justice Samuel Alito also failed to disclose a private trip to Alaska he took in 2008 that was paid for by two wealthy Republican donors, one of whom repeatedly had interests before the court.
The Associated Press also reported in July that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade.
Republicans’ New Speaker Pick Led Effort to Overturn 2020 Election
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – October 25, 2023
It’s Day 22, and the House still doesn’t have a speaker, though the GOP selected another designee out of an apparent carousel of contenders late Tuesday.
Republican Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson, a four-term congressman representing Louisiana, is the latest of the batch to try to unify the divided caucus. Johnson’s beliefs are a sweet spot for many GOP members: He’s anti-LGBT and rallied against Roe v. Wade. And when it comes to the 2020 election, he’s just a less dumb version of Jim Jordan, who played a close role in January 6 but failed to secure the speaker’s gavel earlier this month.
In the days following the 2020 presidential election, Johnson played a more subtle but still key part: He led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 Republicans that sought to overturn election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Then, on January 6, 2021, 139 Republican representatives voted to dispute the Electoral College results, in large part thanks to a loophole nitpicked by Johnson, who The New York Times described as the “most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”
According to the Times, it was Johnson’s lawyerly nuance that made him dangerous.
Offering possible objections based on what he described as “constitutional infirmity,” Johnson claimed there were grounds to reject the election results from states that permitted pandemic-induced state modifications to mail-in ballots and early voting systems that bypassed the approval of state legislatures.
Ultimately, it was Johnson’s work that allowed Republicans to seize on the events of January 6 for political profit, helping them transform their brand from dangers to democracy to defenders of electoral integrity, and garner grassroots support and donations from corporate backers who had once denounced them.
According to a leaflet from Johnson’s office obtained by Punchbowl News, Johnson’s core principles include: individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and human dignity—though none of those seemed to conflict with his belief in overturning the 2020 presidential election results.
Only a few GOP members have indicated so far that they will not support him in a floor vote. His endorsers include Majority Leader Steve Scalise, fellow contender Representative Kevin Hern, and perhaps most critical, Donald Trump.
The Michael Scott look-alike is the second person to snag the speaker nomination in just one day, after Majority Whip Tom Emmer resigned mere hours after his own nomination.
New House Speaker Once Blamed Abortions for Social Security, Medicare Cuts
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – October 25, 2023
The new House speaker, Mike Johnson, has touted some extremely controversial opinions as a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus—but few as unsavory as his apparent hatred for a woman’s right to choose, sizing a woman’s worth up as her ability to create more workers for American businesses.
In a clip that surfaced Tuesday, Johnson put the onus of Republican cuts to essential programs on unborn children, claiming that if American women were producing more bodies to churn the economy then Republicans wouldn’t have to cut essential social programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
“Roe v. Wade gave constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children in America,” Johnson said, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
“You think about the implications of that on the economy; we’re all struggling here to cover the bases of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest. If we had all those able-bodied workers in the economy, we wouldn’t be going upside down and toppling over like this,” he added.
Johnson has also co-sponsored at least three bills hoping to ban abortion at a nationwide level, including the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children From Late-Term Abortions Act, and the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2021, all of which carry criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for physicians who perform abortions.
Where previous nominees flailed around, caucus support for Johnson was resounding. Scalise and Jordan were both Speaker nominees for a number of odd days before it became clear there was no path forward; Jordan saw massive rifts form in his relationships with a handful of his caucus after they received a slew of death and other threats in his name. Emmer was the nominee for just over the run-time of Avengers: Endgame. But when Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) nominated Johnson on the House floor, caucus members reportedly cheered and chanted, “Mike! Mike! Mike!”
In his remarks, not only does Johnson claim Roe “gave constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children,” but he rails against the imagined economic detriments of abortion, pushing his caucus’ outlandish claim that by depleting a hypothetical workforce, abortion has defunded social security: “Think about the implications of that on the economy. We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest,” Johnson says. “If we had all those able-bodied workers in the economy we wouldn’t be going upside down and toppling over like this… Roe was a terrible corruption.” Mind you, social security and health care have been gutted in the last several years by Republican lawmakers, not people who choose to end a pregnancy.
Alas, this is the man who will be presiding over the House moving forward as the threat of another government shutdown looms. This is the man who will be relied on to forge the bipartisan agreements necessary to pass a budget and keep the wheels of our government in motion. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not feeling overly optimistic about things right now.
Editorial: Fla. attorney general moves to silence voters once again
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board – October 24, 2023
Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America/TNS
Attorney General Ashley Moody won’t be satisfied with simply banning abortion in Florida, at which she appears close to success. She also intends to prevent voters from doing anything about it.
Moody has notified the Florida Supreme Court that she will ask it to rule against placing a constitutional initiative guaranteeing abortion rights on the November 2024 ballot.
The drive has collected signatures from more than 400,000 voters toward a required goal of nearly 900,000. Sponsors and supporters have spent more than $9.7 million in anticipation of Florida Supreme Court rulings that would effectively abolish abortion in Florida.
The initiative would change the constitution to say that “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare providers.” It would not affect an existing provision dealing with parental notification.
A focus on ‘viability’
Moody telegraphed her strategy in an opinion essay to Florida newspapers, arguing that the language of the ballot summary and the amendment is ambiguous and would mislead voters.
“As any mother knows, ‘viability’ has two meanings when it comes to pregnancy,” Moody wrote.
Some women, according to Moody, relate viability to the risk of miscarriage, while others take it to mean when a fetus can survive outside the womb.
She wrote that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which supports abortion rights, “notes the two medical definitions.”
What’s misleading is Moody’s misrepresentation of where the American College actually stands on that definition. There is nothing misleading about the term viability so long as doctors are defining it — and they are the only ones who should.
The full definition
This is precisely how doctors define it: “Viability is the capacity of the fetus to survive outside the mother’s uterus. Whether or not this capacity exists is a medical determination, may vary with each pregnancy, and is a matter for the judgment of the responsible attending physician.” (Emphasis added).
Moody did not quote that.
Most commonly, viability is calculated at 23 or 24 weeks of gestation. It is not, and never should be, a matter for meddling or ambitious politicians like Moody.
Moody has consistently been on the wrong side of a woman’s right to her own body. In a pending case being watched nationally, she has urged the court to repeal its historic 1989 decision that Florida’s constitutional right of privacy protects abortion rights.
Were the court to do that, it would effectively limit privacy protection to the release of public records — a faint shred of how the court defined it in 1989.
The court, then and now
“Florida’s privacy provision is clearly implicated in a woman’s decision of whether or not to continue her pregnancy,” Justice Leander Shaw wrote at the time. “We can conceive of few more personal or private decisions concerning one’s body that one can make in the course of a lifetime.”
Restricting the provision, as Moody and the Legislature want the court to do, would expose almost any personal conduct to political control, from end-of-life decisions to the availability of contraception. Parental rights could, and likely would, be subject to unlimited interference by the state.
The pending case involves the constitutionality of Florida’s current ban on abortions past 15 weeks, but a law the Legislature passed this spring automatically caps the procedure at six weeks, a time when many women don’t know they are pregnant, if the court upholds the 15-week ban.
In what appears to be a clear breach of judicial ethics, Justice Charles Canady has been participating in the case despite the interest of his wife, state Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland, as a co-sponsor of the six-week abortion ban, which passed as SB 300.
Moody and the Legislature are contemptuous of how the voters spoke nine years ago on a ballot proposal by lawmakers that would have expressly overruled the 1989 precedent. It would have narrowed privacy rights to those determined by the U.S. Supreme Court under the federal constitution. The vote was 4.3 million against and 3.5 million in favor. Had it passed, there would be no privacy rights in Florida because of the high court’s subsequent decision repealing Roe v. Wade.
Hostility toward voters
Moody’s quibbling over “viability” is in line with her hostility to giving voters a voice on other controversial citizen-sponsored amendments. She opposes those dealing with marijuana. Even after Parkland, she sided with the gun lobby in persuading the court to not allow a statewide vote on banning assault weapons.
The attorney general is required to petition the court to rule on proposed initiatives when they hit a threshold of verified signatures. The abortion question qualified with 222,881. Moody is not required to oppose them. It is difficult to conceive of any dealing with abortion rights, marijuana legalization or guns to which she would not manufacture an objection.
The job of Florida attorney general has long been called “the people’s lawyer.” Moody is not.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email atletters@sun-sentinel.com.
Negligent builders and developers might be responsible for hidden peril underneath Florida: ‘Some shady folks still used them’
Rick Kazmer – October 23, 2023
Recently released government data about the Sunshine State could provide a new moniker for Florida — the Lead Pipe State.
That’s because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that Florida has more lead pipes in its water systems — 1.16 million of them — than any other state, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Florida highlights a national problem, as some 9.2 million lead pipes carry drinking water to households around the country, the Times reports. It’s a concern that has lingered for decades with severe health implications.
As a result, the government plans to pump billions of dollars into lead-pipe-heavy states to tackle the problem.
“Every community deserves access to safe, clean drinking water,” EPA administrator Michael Regan told the Tampa Bay Times.
Why are lead pipes dangerous?
Drinking water contaminated with lead can cause heart problems, lower IQ rates among children, and anemia, among a list of other serious health problems, according to the EPA.
Lead was spotlighted in 2014 during the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Lead leached into the water supply, causing severe health problems for the community.
Why are lead pipes still a concern?
Craig Pittman has been following the lead pipe story for Florida Phoenix, a nonprofit news site. In a recent column, he said that the building and development industry is partially to blame for lingering lead concerns.
Despite increased regulations during the decades, he wrote, lead solder, flux, and pipes were still being used. The government ramped up regulations on lead pipes in 1986.
“Even after lead pipes were banned … some shady folks still used them, figuring they wouldn’t get caught because the evidence was literally buried out of sight. Meanwhile, a lot of lead pipes were already in use all around the country,” Pittman wrote.
He talked to civil engineer Alison Adams, who works for the utility company Tampa Bay Water. Adams said the lead is often found after the public utility hookup, because it’s in the materials the builders used.
“Lead pipes were used in the building industry, not in public water supply,” she said. “A utility’s responsibility ends at the meter to a home. Lead pipes were used between the meter and in homes or businesses, including schools, as a matter of construction.”
What’s being done about lead in the water?
The EPA highlighted the lead problem as part of a survey of 3,500 water systems around the country. The Times reported that about $625 billion is needed to upgrade the systems.
President Joe Biden has promised $15 billion to clear out all of the nation’s lead pipes, according to the Times.
It’s a lofty goal that will target states with the most lead. After Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York have the most lead pipes, the Times reports.
How can I test for lead at home?
The EPA has a guide that outlines how to test your service line for lead. It includes details on the different faucets and fixtures that commonly contain the heavy metal.
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“Built his empire on lies”: Trump Org appraiser calls out “inaccurate” statements as Trump watches
Gabriella Ferrigine – October 18, 2023
Donald Trump Andrew Kelly-Pool/Getty Images
Former president Donald Trump ventured back to Manhattan on Tuesday as part of his civil fraud case, which came about after New York Attorney General Letitia James argued that Trump, along with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and the Trump Organization, had inflated the value of more than a dozen assets by hundreds of millions, subsequently using those phony values to defraud banks and insurers in order to secure more advantageous deals and secure loans.
As he entered the court, Trump chastised the case as “a witch hunt by a radical lunatic attorney general.”
“We built a great company — a lot of cash, it’s got a lot of great assets, some of the greatest real estate assets, anywhere in the world,” the ex-president added.
A key part of Tuesday’s trial proceedings came in the form of testimony from a real estate appraiser for the Trump Organization, who harshly criticized the company’s “inaccurate and inappropriate” behavior in attributing the faulty numbers to him.
The New York Daily News reported that former Trump organization executive Jeff McConney, in statements shown in court accounting for Trump’s value between 2013 and 2018, said that the appraiser — Cushman & Wakefield executive director Doug Larson — had advised him via phone in the specifics of assigning swollen values to assets such as Trump’s Wall Street tower.
Larson vehemently denied that the call took place, however, also rejecting McConney’s claim that he had worked “in conjunction” with the former president of any affiliates of the Trump Organization to appraise assets. “It’s inappropriate and inaccurate,” Larson said. “I should have been told, and an appraisal should have been ordered.”
At one point, Mark Ladov, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, cited an instance in which the Trump Organization ignored the numbers Larson crunched, adding a whopping 35 percent to 40 Wall Street in 2016, which Larson had valued at $540 million. In that year’s financial statement, the skyscraper was listed by Trump’s company at $735.4 million. And in 2013, the Trump Organization tacked on a 3.12% capitalization raise to 1290 Avenue of the Americas, attributing the rise to Larson’s input and increasing the building’s value to just shy of $1 billion.
Following Tuesday’s events, Attorney General James said that while the former president could “rant and rave” all he wanted, it would not alter the fact that he “built his empire on lies.”
“Mr. Trump may lie, but numbers don’t lie,” she said. “Mr. Trump’s entire empire is built on nothing but lies. Sinking sand.”
James has asserted that Trump routinely overstated his net worth to financial institutions by between $812 million to $2.2 billion, depending on the year and the specific applications he filed. She is seeking a penalty of about $250 million. Late last month, New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, in a summary judgment, ruled that Trump had committed fraud in the state for years by misrepresenting his financial status while steadily expanding his real estate.
Engoron’s decision effectively barred Trump and his adult sons from conducting business in New York ever again. The judge also ordered punitive measures, including that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded — meaning he will lose control of key real estate if upheld following appeal — and ordered that an outside “receiver” must be appointed to supervise the management of those Trump properties.
“The next borrower, or the one after that, might default, and if its (financial statements) are false, the lender might unfairly be left holding the bag,” Engoron wrote. “This will distort the lending marketplace and deprive other potential borrowers of the opportunity to obtain loans and create wealth.”
Trump at the hearing also took shots at his former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, saying he “didn’t have the guts” to show face. Cohen has acted as a key witness in 2019, providing pivotal testimony that catalyzed James’s investigation.
“If I was afraid of Donald, I wouldn’t have written 2 NYT bestsellers, testified before the Mueller team, seven congressional committees, 23 appearances before the Manhattan DA, and provided information to the NYAG that is the basis of this trial,” Cohen told the Daily News.
“Looking forward to seeing you in court very soon!” he quipped to his old client.
