I mean, obviously tax fraud is tax fraud, but it is fraud against a bank to lie to a bank. McDonald's can't lie to you to sell you a hamburger and Trump can't lie to people to get investors. Separate issues than tax fraud.
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves
But when the taxman come to the door
Lord, the house lookin' like a rummage sale, yeah
Securing loans against inflated equity is fraud and problematic regardless still. It's like if a normal person was to Photoshop bank statements and paychecks to secure a mortgage they didn't qualify for. It's fraud and it's a felony.
This is what we get for not enforcing the tax code and basic business regulations (like "don't commit fraud") on the rich.
Trump's tax fraud schemes have been public knowledge for decades, but apparently it's not possible to prosecute these things when the fraud reaches amounts of 7+ figures.
Once you get enough money, you can openly commit fraud in the country. It's not even a secret. Once you have a big enough legal fund prosecutors don't want to go after you, because they could lose. They can't possibly risk having another loss on their tally. Better to force some brown people to plead out on planted dime bags because they can't afford a lawyer.
After journalists revealed several years ago that former President Donald Trump was likely not as wealthy as he claimed, executives at his company scrambled to justify new allegedly inflated valuations, volleying around ideas like applying a "premium for presidential property" to certain assets, according to evidence presented during Trump's civil fraud trial in New York.
The internal deliberations began after Forbes magazine revealed in 2017 that Trump's Manhattan triplex, or three-story apartment, was about a third of the size he had long claimed — about 11,000 square feet, instead of more than 30,000 — and thus far less valuable.
And, New York Attorney General Letitia James claimed in her 2022 lawsuit, those high valuations were also personally important to Trump.
Weisselberg acknowledged during his Tuesday testimony another directive he gave to former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney that was intended to boost the value of properties: simply say some of them are worth 30% more.
Attorneys for the defense have argued in filings that the company was within its rights to add so-called "brand premiums" to its valuations.
Birney fired off a series of emails to the company's bankers and others — some he said may have been dictated by Weisselberg — seeking information related to the values of various properties.
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