Donald Trump has screwed up a lot of peoples’ lives, not to mention the 350,000 Americans who died from COVID because he was telling people, “It will just disappear like a miracle one day.” Add to the list the condo and business owners currently in Trump Tower, who are now victims of ETTD, everything Trump touches dies. A New York judge threw a real whammy into Trump’s stage act Tuesday when the Trump Organization was ordered dissolved, a judge was appointed to monitor assets and 10 days were given to find a receiver. What will that receiver do — assuming, for the sake of argument at this point, that Trump’s assets will be seized and liquidated, by order of the court? We know Leticia James has asked for a $250 million judgment, and if she gets it, how will Trump pay?

Look at it this way, he might as well get rid of Trump Tower. He’s no longer got business to conduct in Manhattan, that’s an absolute. So Trump Tower may just be an expensive albatross he no longer needs. Which is going to pose one hell of an inconvenience to Melania and her parents, because that’s where they’ve been a lot of the time. The last time Melania was spotted publicly it was leaving Trump Tower a few months ago.

Now Trump could let Melania and his once-Communist Party card-carrying member father-in-law and wife stay in Trump Tower, or he may have to get real and let the place go up for auction. That is the theory that Twitter is kicking around this morning with Trump biographer David Cay Johnston and others. And with respect to Melania and parents, they have other places to live. The condo owners don’t.

And of course there’s a drop dead dirty dog match going on now between Eric Trump and the world over what assets are worth what. As you’ve seen, Eric claims Mar-a-Lago is worth $1 billion, and the court values it at $18 million, which is quite a disparity. Never the twain shall meet on those two figures, me thinks.

The Hotel Hillary, I’ll go along with that. Another suggestion has been to rename the place the Hillary Clinton Federal Building. That would work, too.

Maybe this is Lady Karma having a field day.

I would love it to become a homeless shelter. I would contribute to such a thing, personally. Migrant housing is another suggestion which has been made and that works, too.

Now here’s the part that’s going to piss off Melania. And this may explain why she’s MIA. She probably was told by the lawyers that this was coming. If she has any brains, and I give her a lot of credit for peasant cunning, certainly not intellect, she’s got her own lawyers. I know I would if I was in her Louboutin shoes, wondering if I’d have to sell my 25 carat diamond.

Let us take a look at Johnston’s piece, shall we?

Donald Trump is no longer in business.

Worse, the self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday.

His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.

A New York State judge on Tuesday cancelled all of the business licenses for the Trump Organization and its 500 or so subsidiary  companies and partnerships after finding that Trump used them to, along with his older two sons, commit fraud.

Under the New York General Business Law you can only do business in your own name as a sole proprietor or with a business license, which the state calls a “business certificate.”  All of Trump’s businesses were corporations or partnerships that require business certificates.

Now here’s the part I was looking for. This is why the Trump lawyers got sanctioned.

Five Trump lawyers were each fined $7,500 for making “frivolous” arguments.

A judge calling a lawyer’s argument “frivolous” is the equivalent of saying it is no better than nonsense from a drunk in a bar, as I teach my Syracuse University College of Law students.

Those lawyers may well find it wise to hire their own lawyers as Judge Engoron’s findings could form the basis of disbarment proceedings, something already underway against Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor, and John Eastman, a former dean of the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, Calif.

Oh, mama. And Christopher Kise, one of the lawyers who was sanctioned, left a partnership at a prestigious firm to work for Trump. I hope he got a bundle up front. Either that, or he’s a MAGA lunatic himself, with delusions of grandeur. Maybe he thought he would get Trump off the hook and then wind up attorney general in the second Trump term. I have no idea, I’m just speculating on why a partner in a white-shoe law firm would leave that and go to work for a gangster like Trump. There had to be some reason.

In 2015 Trump claimed his net worth was north of $10 billion. When he became president, he asked if he could file his federally required financial disclosure statements without signing them under penalty of perjury. That request was denied. The statement Trump then filed, by my counting, showed a net worth of not much more than $1 billion, but was based on fantastical assertions of value.

News organizations, except DCReport, told their audiences next to nothing about how from June 2015 to January 2017 Trump’s claimed net worth fell by roughly 90 percent.

Trump will, of course, appeal. He is already suing the judge, so far without success.

Trial goes forward next week and the amount of fines for bank fraud and insurance fraud will be determined. Trump will then have to pay the judgment out of pocket, or his assets will be seized and liquidated. Or, maybe he’ll get MAGA to pay the judgment. That wouldn’t surprise me one bit. I know he’ll try.

Now here’s a key point, remember this one: Trump has to disgorge his ill-gotten gains.

The principal issue to be decided at a trial scheduled to start Monday, Oct. 2, is how much Trump will be fined.

Trump also argued that since he paid his bank loans and insurance premiums on time no one was hurt. He argued against “restitution.”

The judge noted that the case is not about restitution but disgorging ill-gotten gains.

Here’s the analogy I will teach my students: Suppose your employer is closing for a day and when business is done you swipe $100 from the cash register, go to the racetrack, make a winning bet and before business resumes you put back $100.

You still committed a crime and if get caught you forfeit the track winnings as the proceeds of your ill-got gain — that’s disgorgement.

Again, oh mama. Trump is going to be climbing the walls over this one. This is financial wipe out time. And don’t think Melania doesn’t know it. She’s off radar while her husband is running for president. That’s also a unique situation in this country. She married somebody she thought was one of the richest men in the world. She thought she and her son and her parents would be set for life. Now she’s probably rethinking all that. Oh well. Get in bed with the devil, don’t complain when you get burned.

 

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16 COMMENTS

  1. All that teeth gnashing she must have done, letting that pig slobber all over her, now must make her skin crawl…when he was supposedly worth billions it was tolerable for an escort…now…not so much.
    Bring me moose and squirrel!!! Natasha…you should’ve stayed with Boris.
    By the way…Where’s the big game hunter? He’s been awfully quiet! I guess he’s worried about coming up with the cash for his habit. Time to move on to crack…it’s cheaper.

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    • I seriously think there has been a rift in that “marriage.” You may recall that Trump told Meghan Kelly that he didn’t want Melania to campaign, she’s out of sight because it’s his decision. That told me everything I need to know. She’s sick of looking bad and she’s not equipped to handle this kind of scrutiny. Few people are. Melania’s talent is in looking good. And she wasn’t even all that great as a model. She’s too stiff. Photographers have said this about her, “She doesn’t know how to move.” The art of modeling involves fluidity of movement and Melania is like an arthritic patient more than a supermodel. Sounds brutal but it’s true.

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        • I read it from the lips of one of her photographers. That’s what the man said, “she doesn’t know how to move.” And if you look at other top fashion models, they move like ballet dancers. You’ve got to have both, a certain look and grace. She’s got the look and zero grace. I didn’t make up the rules of modeling, I just quote the people who did.

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      • Back to the good-ole-days, when women learned from Mom, in a cringing conversation, to just lay there and do what he wants, because in those days, the MAN was “THE MAN” of the house, NOT someone that held their wife in loving embraces, or pet their head in understanding their pain or sad situation, it WAS his privilege’s controlling the wife’s place in the home …

        I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like the Republican, men in the House of Reps are NOT loving, caring husbands at home … They seem to be more vocal, ready to attack anyone that calls themselves a Democrat … I see what a turd Trump is, and his admitting his past do-wrongs on that recorded conversation on that bus, including, “They love that stuff”, after saying, “That’s when I make my move”, “You can do anything when you are a star” … please use the restroom for your barfing fits when you see Trump open his feted mouth again …

        Trump IS going down, the possibility of a very public collapse is now only a few minutes away … With the Judges in his list of various criminal practice areas, NOW starting to swing those heavy mallets very close to his happy hide-outs, he has even less places to hide in … He is probably babbling a mixture of obscenities’, tears in his eyes, a genuine lump in his throat … A mess of a situation his own mouth has formed … Too Bad, Donald, a reminder, it will not go good for you if you don’t turn your cell phone over to the people behind the cage counter when you enter the prison in a peaceful manner … follow the rules in detail, don’t say things disrespectful to the, “Old timers”, already there, it will bounce back in horrid ways …

        I can hardly wait to see the tri-harder team of Eric and Don-2 squeal and holler about how unfair the Dad has been treated, of course, they will claim the Corporate’s rules relieve THEM of personal convictions, but I also see the juggernauts of legal responsibility knocking on their doors with pink slips telling them to pack all their personal gear for easy exit in 24 hours … that view to me is a wonderful thing, the SS crew is going to find some interesting situations to handle, I hope they can be released if Trump is held in prison … maybe only helping when Trump is moved to different quarters …

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  2. Melania was never seriously a model; she was a wannabe soft-core porn actress. I’ve seen the footage of her rolling around, all oiled up, with an equally oily woman of similar talents. Her target was some rich guy who would rescue her from doing anything at all, and allow her to live very well, dress accordingly and perform the various duties required of high-priced arm candy. That may have included sex on demand and maybe even offspring. Melania got all that but her rich asshole decided to fuck it all up by becoming president, thereby liable for legal scrutiny over his corrupt businesses. I suspect she’s stashed enough to keep her and her family in comfort, somewhere far far away from Donald J Trump.

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    • I remember reading years before he ran for Pres. that Melanoma wanted a child and he didn’t want anymore kids. He finally agreed but only if she promised to keep her figure.

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    • If what’s on the internet about her wealth is true, she’s worth $50 million, which is enough to live a very comfortable life. She can educate her son on that, take care of her aging parents, all that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she just vanished one night with the parents and the kid.

      Problem is, the kid needs to go to college and it’s going to be rough on him wherever he goes, because this is a worldwide scandal. Everybody is watching what America is going to do with this clown.

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  3. Mid September, due to Sept. 17th on the calendar and its significance in our (military) history is a time I set aside to read two books, and also watch a great movie that was made with a fairly high degree of fidelity to a seminal work on one of those books – A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan (better known for The Longest Day) The massive allied airborne operation in Holland who’s goal was the capture of the huge highway bridge (and a less known but substantial railway bridge) over the Rhine. It would take too long to explain why Operation Market-Garden failed to achieve the primary objective but I’ll just say that when given command of the operation from Montgomery, Field Marshal Browning tapped Arnhem on the map and asked how long it would take for the armor to get there. “Monty” with his typical arrogance said two days. No doubt thinking of all the other bridges over wide (and deep) canals and rivers XXX Corps would have to cross in that 65 mile (intended dash) said “We can hold it for four. But sir, I think we may be going a bridge too far.”

    Which is just how it worked out. Monty of course would claim (and given the costs in lives and military resources he had some serious explaining to do) Market-Garden was “90% successful” but without getting hold of that crucial, priceless river crossing of the Rhine it was the very real life example of a pyrrhic victory. He tried to go a bridge too far.

    I’ve thought for a while “Melanie” has been making the same mistake with Trump. Like his prior trophy wives she got his standard prenup and after a certain number of years and pumping out a kid (so he could prove he was still getting laid with someone “hot”) she’d step aside so he could move on to trophy wife #4. She’d put in her time when he decided to run for President. At first she was devastated by his winning. Then, the peasant cunning you mentioned kicked in and she started realizing the amount of leverage she had. There’s been more than one renegotiated prenup we can be sure. But after Trump lost in 2020, since by then her parents had become naturalized citizens she should have cashed out.

    Instead she decided to go for another round of negotiations to stick around and play wife sometimes for a second WH run. THAT will I think cost her dearly. What I find funny is that she might well have looked at the mounting legal troubles including and especially that NY state civil case and thought “time to collect mine fooking moneeh” only to find Trump didn’t have the cash flow to pay her! And now she’s looking at the apartments/condos, the beach house or two and even just the cold hard cash payout and might not get jack. A trophy wife spouse is pretty far down the list of those who can expect to get a payment with the assets are distributed by the courts.

    She won’t quite be poor. But the life of luxury she’d envisioned? Nope. That is GONE!

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  4. It doesn’t matter if he paid back the loans. The fact that he fraudulently obtained them deprived other potential borrowers access to those funds.

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