Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy argued that New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron are \u201cinventing losses no one ever suffered\u201d to try to \u201cget Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week, former President Donald Trump testified<\/a> in the civil fraud case brought by James alleging that he and the Trump Organization inflated the values of his properties to secure more favorable loan terms.<\/p>\n James wants $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump and his company doing business in New York.<\/p>\n Before testifying Monday, Trump told reporters<\/a> that his company\u2019s financial statements were \u201cvery conservative,\u201d adding, \u201cSo therefore there\u2019s no fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n Further, the 45th president explained that his property valuations have a \u201cbig disclaimer clause\u201d instructing would-be lenders to do their own due diligence to determine what they believe the assets are worth.<\/p>\n After testifying, Trump said, \u201cThere\u2019s no case here. There are no victims. The banks aren\u2019t a victim. The insurance companies aren\u2019t a victim. Everybody got paid.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe attorney general of this state is a disgrace. Letitia James is a disgrace to our country and to the state of New York,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n \u201cShe should focus on all of the violent crimes and the murder<\/a> going on in New York, not on somebody who paid back the banks in full without a default and in many cases paid them back early,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In September, Engoron ruled<\/a> by summary judgment \u2014 meaning before there was any trial \u2014 that Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud against lenders and insurers by inflating the values of the company\u2019s properties.<\/p>\n The judge is now holding a non-jury trial to decide what penalties he should impose on the former president and the Trump Organization.<\/p>\n Last week, James\u2019 attorneys called<\/a> a bank expert who testified that the Trump Organization saved $168 million in loan interest payments by not accurately stating the value of its properties.<\/p>\n McCarthy is not buying it.<\/p>\n \u201cPatently, there are flaws in the James-Engoron theory,\u201d he wrote in a National Review article<\/a> published Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, if there were proof that Trump had ripped banks off in this manner and to this extent, this would have been a huge criminal case that no prosecutor\u2019s office would pass up \u2014 certainly not the famously aggressive feds in the Southern District of New York (where I worked for two decades),\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cand certainly not the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office, which twice litigated all the way to the Supreme Court to get Trump\u2019s financial records, and which was not too embarrassed to bring a ludicrous indictment over the comparative chump change ($130,000) in hush-money Trump paid to a porn star.\u201d<\/p>\n McCarthy went on to argue, as Trump<\/a> has, that \u201cbanks in high-end lending are sophisticated financial actors who do not take the debtor\u2019s word for it when it comes to valuing assets \u2014 they have entire departments of experienced appraisers assessing values.\u201d<\/p>\n So he asserted that the banks were not tricked into loaning money to the Trump Organization.<\/p>\n To put a nail in the coffin of the case, McCarthy noted that even if Trump\u2019s properties<\/a> were overvalued, \u201cthere is no evidence that the banks would have charged a higher interest rate.\u201d<\/p>\n He explained that the banks set the terms of their loans based on multiple factors, such as Trump\u2019s history of paying up, the knowledge that he could shop around for other banks if their interest rates were too high, and the fact that they\u2019re in the business of making loans to earn money.<\/p>\n McCarthy further observed that if the banks truly felt Trump had defrauded them out of millions of dollars, they would have sued him and the Trump Organization themselves.<\/p>\n The former prosecutor concluded, \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing thing to watch: Donald Trump, front-runner in the Republican presidential nomination race, is on trial for supposedly inventing wealth that he didn\u2019t have; and in order to nail him, elected Democrats Tish James and Arthur Engoron are inventing losses that no one ever suffered.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s legal team sought a directed verdict<\/a> on Thursday, asking Engoron to dismiss the case based on evidence presented at trial, including Trump\u2019s testimony on Monday.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s attorney Christopher Kise argued that state lawyers had failed to meet \u201cany legal standard\u201d to prove allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.<\/p>\n This article appeared originally on The Western Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Letitia James Trying to Nail Trump for \u2018Losses No One Ever Suffered,\u2019 Former Fed Prosecutor Says<\/a> appeared first on The Gateway Pundit<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy argued that New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan Supreme Court Justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n