https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-colossal-admission-during-trial-1841335
Legal analysts say Trump admitted that the intent in financial representations he made was to convince lenders to loan him money.
Legal analysts say Trump admitted that the intent in financial representations he made was to convince lenders to loan him money.
A plausible sounding article I read stated that his lawyers knew from the start that they didn't have a chance of winning anyway. This whole thing is just theater to try and stall as long as possible to buy time until the election.
I'm sure they've already got plans to cheat their way to a "victory" on that front as well.
But also taking time to give him a proper trial ensures that the final ruling is constitutional and can't risk being declared a mistrial later on.
This is a civil, not criminal trial. Can't self incriminate if it's not a criminal trial, so the 5th amendment doesn't apply (not sure how it works if there's other trials ongoing with cross interest in testimony).
The fifth Amendment would not apply to the allegations in the civil complaint. It's still applies to his testimony with regard to uncharged criminal conduct. In other words, he cannot be required to testify in the civil case to something that would incriminate him in an uncharged criminal matter. At least that's my understanding as an attorney, however, I admit I never have to deal with this issue and the one time it almost came up, the other lawyer never asked my witness the right questions.
Only people Trump ever paid on time, or at all, was businesses connected to the Russian Mob.
exactly. which is why competent lawyers are staying away. Even moderately incompetent ones would demand payment upfront.
Only lawyers willing to take up trumps case, are people who think the fame of being associated with him will benefit them in the future.
Which says all you need to know about their intellectual capacity.
It’s reached a point where now I’m instantly skeptical of any lawyer who starts going on the news circuit while a case is on-going - they’re looking for fame, not to talk about the case.
They’ll capitalize on their 15 minutes of MAGA fame and write a book or run for office or whatever.
People keep saying this but honesty if you dont have anything going for you... Why not do it for free?
I know bugger all about law but surely everyone will know you in the profession, and if you mange to do anything close to a good job, then you get some kind of credibility from it?
Seems like a yolo opportunity for anyone wanting to make a name for themselves.
Ahh the good old “exposure “ argument.
It’s refreshing seeing it applied to lawyers instead of artists.
At this level there is much more to lose than gain. Trump can literally threaten your law license. The exposure isn’t worth the risk.
Sure, that's already happened. Watching Trump jeopardize Chris Kise's legal career with games on the stand tho.... This may be the first time a defense attorney just pops a blood vessel wanting to scream "SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE YOU RIDICULOUS FUCKNUT"
The thing I love most about this article is this one throw-away little line right here:
He ... claims that all of his legal troubles amount to "election interference" as he campaigns in the 2024 presidential election.
It just illustrates who Trump is so well. First, he hears a term that he doesn't understand, like: "election interference". Like what he did when he incited his cult of morons to attack the capitol during January 6th to prevent Congress from certifying the election. Then, he takes that term that he doesn't understand and uses it improperly to insinuate that that's what's being done to him. This is either because he's too dumb to know what it means and too stubborn to look it up, or because he believes that about his cultists.
This is the exact same playbook he used for "puppet" during his debates with Hillary, "Fake news" when he was campaigning, "witch hunt" when he was being investigated for impeachable offenses, etc.
The man is a complete god damned moron, and yet somehow, he's managed to figure out that a significant number of Americans are even dumber than he is, and he has become their messiah. It's awe-inducing.
This is what fascists do. They co-opt the language of their political opponents, and divorce any meaning from the word.
The strategy is to deny their opponents the vocabulary they need to organize. This is part of the same strategy as burning books that teach black history and banning students from saying the word gay.
They never taught their slaves how to read either
To not focus on the semantics but the main point. It's obvious whoever is doing it is being childish and immature so the counter tactic is to be the adult in the room and to talk to them as if they were a child you were disciplining.
That's not Trump not understanding what things mean, that's modern Republican messaging strategy. MTG literally just called a protest Tlaib led "an insurrection" last week. They water down words until they have no meaning anymore, and explicitly accuse the other side of what they're doing to feed the "both sides" narrative, and take weight off genuine accusations from Democrats or the media. They've been doing it for a while. They've also done it with "weaponization of government" recently and a few other words and phrases I can't think of right now. This is why people talk about Republicans being hypocrites and "projecting". They do it very much on purpose.
He's watering down the terms. "Fake news" is a perfect example. He completely stole the term and directed attention away from all the literally fake news websites created to help his election.
Can't attribute that to Trump, news themselves watered down "fake news" when they started putting up fact checks that weren't very factfull
You don't have to be smart to be a conman. And being not the brightest bulb in any room, might actually help Trump doing what he does best (conning people): ethical or non gullible people are very quickly put off by him, leaving him surrounded by unethical people who have no qualms enabling him (as long as they believe that they stand to gain from it) + gullible people that can be milked for all their worth. This is why it was such a smart move for Trump to leave the democratic party and become a republican: the republican party loves gullible voters + unethical fellow travellers. Basically the same reasoning as to why spam phishing mail is so obvious usually: scammers don't want to waste their time on non gullible people.
This is why Jerry Falwell approached Ronald Reagan: they both loved money, power, and authority that those provide. Falwell provided Reagan with millions of followers who had been brainwashed from birth to blindly obey a male authority figure. Hence, the modern Republican Party: millions of "Christians" whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to the teachings of their God. Cognitive dissonance at it's finest.
He's genius is in his ability to market himself. the fact that he is a moron just means he's often stumbling on stupid shit that will resonate with morons, and he has that keen sense to take advantage of it.
Great quote from a Slate op-ed: “You can often protect your client against the government, but you can never protect him against himself.”
Why is this colossal? The judge already ruled he committed fraud, are we pretending that he lied about his finances to convince ponies to let him brush their hair? What other intent could there be besides getting more money?
Now they don’t have to prove his intent. It just makes the case that much easier; no way the defense can raise questions about errors or revisions.
Not that it would matter much, but it basically eliminates any possibility of arguments around it, futile as they may be. Which means there’ll be no time wasted on it (or at most, less time wasted on it).
Just because something seems obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary to prove it.
Fair enough, time certainly is of the essence in these cases. We got about a year to put this man somewhere he can't hurt anyone else.
Not gonna happen. No matter how this trial goes. I know I sound cynical, I want to be wrong. I don't think he sees a cell, and if somehow he does I bet he runs for president from there.
This is a civil trial. He won’t see jail for it. The documents case he might but that one doesn’t even start for like 8 months.
Ah thanks for the reminder. So in this case he'll see no consequences that impact him whatsoever, I'm sure.
Why are you ignoring the fact that he's losing the ability to do business in NYC? That's basically his entire brand, and how he's made money since he was a child:
Engoron ordered the cancellation of state business certificates filed by Trump, his two adult sons and the other defendants in the case, meaning the former president will potentially lose control of his famed New York properties.
They're taking Trump Tower and a bunch of buildings away from him. Many buildings with his name on them are owned by other people. The Trump Org just managed the building, and they are not going to be able to exist in NYC any longer.
What does he care? All he has to do now is continue to grift money from maga - which will be even easier as he becomes more and more of a martyr, and after he gets the Republican nomination.
Until he's sitting in a cell, he's experienced nothing but inconvenience.
Ianal but I expect this admission also materially harms any relief Trump may seek on appeal...
Hard to claim it's a witch hunt when you admit guilt of the accused fraud under oath.
So colossal, we didn't include it in the headline!
That's how I know this is a big nothing-burger.
It's a civil case so unfortunately this won't result in jail time. A few good things can come out. First he could lose money and potentially properties in New York. He could also lose the ability to run a business in New York. Lastly, if he keeps saying and doing dumb shit there is a good chance that some of that helps the criminal cases he's been arrested for. Then hopefully we put him in an old fashioned oubliette and we can all move on.
I'm sure his lawyers will just argue that all financial representations to a lender are intended to get the lender to lend you money. That's the whole point. Why else would you give them the info? The real problem will be getting him to directly admit intentionally fraud.
I read most of it. The summary in the post is all you need. The article just restates it a bunch and shares Twitter posts.
Of course? That's why he was talking the the lenders in the first place. He was trying to get a loan. If he intentionally falsified the information is another question, but of course he was trying to get a loan.
It seems obvious and therefore like not a big deal. but it was a critical step for the prosecution to make their argument. Basically "these statements were meant to get a loan". They've already demonstrated that the statements were false, and that they knew they were false. Final step is to show that they made the false statements to either get a more favorable loan- or because an honest statement wouldn't have succeeded.
That's the thing about effective prosecutions. They break it down into tiny little baby steps, each of which are simple and true, and nobody can argue against them. Then they put them all together, and the case is ironclad.
When someone's on trial for a crime, the state often needs to prove the person intended to commit the crime. Trump saying he intended to use those documents to secure a loan proves intent.
The court has already established the documents contained knowingly false information, with the residence that Trump has lived in for decades being listed as 3x its actual size. Even conservatively, his property holdings were overestimated by $812 million. The judge ruled there was no way that could be considered an accident.
So the court has ruled that the documents are knowingly false, and now Trump stated he intended to use them to get a loan. No lawyer in the world could get Trump out of this one.
All these morons like yourself don’t understand shit about these court cases but you sure feel confident in sharing your uneducated opinions!
Do yourself a favor, check out Justice Matters with Glenn Kirschner, legal AF, or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s The Breakdown: the Trump indictment
Maybe you’ll actually realize what is going on instead of going by clickbait titles in the media
I know enough (thanks to everyone who kindly replied) to know that everyone in the world save for those directly involved in the court case can safely assume Trump wanted a loan when he a applied for a loan. Sure, it's an important step for the lawyers, but it's so obvious that it's only newsworthy if they couldn't establish it.
The article is a waste of time.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the news part about this is. This feels like it's building to something newsworthy but isn't itself newsworthy. It's not exactly shocking that the person applying for a loan wanted a loan.
The lawyers and legal analysts think it's significant. While it seems obvious to us, it's part of proving their case step-by-step.
That's exactly what I said. It is a piece to building something newsworthy, but in itself isn't.
Why don’t you go ahead and tell all of these legal analysts they’re wrong, I wonder how they would react to a layman such as yourself dripping with willful ignorance telling them what they say is meaningless and not shocking
Like, it’s not about shock it’s about the court case. If you don’t understand it, maybe try and learn first. I’ll give you a jump start, check out Justice Matters with Glenn Kirschner, Legal AF, or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s The breakdown: the Trump indictment
Maybe you’ll actually understand what is being done and why, informed by actual fucking lawyers instead of going by news articles and clickbait.
That's not how this works. I shouldn't have to be previously informed of legal documents in order to understand a news article. The article should cover that... I don't have the time to be reading legal docs that will in no way benefit my life. If the news can't inform me, then it isn't newsworthy. That's just bad journalism.
The news is that the left never learned that Trump rode his way to presidency off these meaningless "guyz guess what stupid thing le drumpf did today click our paywall article to find out and remember to turn off ad blocker or you hate democracy" articles.
Truly would have been nice if the media had stfu about him at any time in the past few years. Amazing how much free publicity they give this chump while they profit from it.