Volume 10, Issue 37
Why?
The banks in question are not part of the lawsuit. The loans are not in default and are paid current pursuant to schedule. No one petitioned the Attorney General for help. No one is asking the Attorney General for relief. And, no one is asking the Attorney General to represent them. Most state Attorney General offices have an anti-fraud division. As the “people’s lawyer,” Attorneys General are responsible for protecting defenseless citizens. This would include door-to-door solicitors who collect down payments for storm damage repair and leave town without making repairs. Those who would prey on vulnerable retirees through phone solicitation or the internet to obtain private information or funds by a scam should be prosecuted. Donald Trump did not go door-to-door or solicit funds from individuals.
One of the banks in question making loans to Donald Trump is Deutsche Bank headquartered in Germany. It is reported that former President Trump may be indebted to the bank in excess of $430 million. These loans are secured primarily by his golf courses. Rest assured that a prime center bank such as Deutsche Bank is not naïve or incapable of determining for themselves what a property is worth. Reasonable people can disagree on the value of a property. Banks today look more at cash flow and proven revenue streams than asset valuation. Deutsche Bank is not a naïve vulnerable entity that needs the Attorney General’s oversight or protection in making loans.
Claims for damages must be based on evidence of actual damages. No citizen of New York has lost a penny to date on The Trump Organization loans cited in the Attorney General’s lawsuit. There is no public-private partnership that needs to be defended. There is no cost or loss of taxpayers’ money currently or through any foreseeable projected future.
The Attorney General could find no criminal offense on which to indict the former President. Therefore, without actual damages, any judgment in a civil lawsuit is a fine imposed by the Attorney General without any basis for criminal activity. How Donald Trump conducts private business with an equal partner like Deutsche Bank, at no cost to the state or citizens of New York, is none of the Attorney General’s business. Extending the lawsuit to personally cite his children, without any evidence that they had direct knowledge of their father’s personal financial balance sheet, can only be surmised as politically punitive.
The lawsuit will either be dismissed or settled. Yet, the damage is done to the reputation of the former President. Regardless of one’s opinion of Donald Trump, he and his children do not deserve to be singled out and treated in this manner. Seeking to bar The Trump Organization from ever doing business again in the State of New York, without any finding of criminal wrongdoing, borderlines on political persecution.
If the state has the authority to bar an individual from doing business because it disagrees with him or her politically, or can intervene in private transactions wherein all parties are satisfied, then the first step to totalitarianism has been taken.
The investigation ongoing pursuant to Docugate, retrieving purported classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, does have merit. If sensitive government documents are discovered as a result of the FBI search, then accountability must be maintained on their removal. If they were declassified by the President, then that declassification must be documented. There is a discipline to preserve the protocol of handling classified material that is critical to the continuity of the Presidency and its relationship with the other two branches of federal government.
The problem is that elected officials are not maintaining their own discipline on the protocol of rule of law in application of their power. The result is that the public becomes less and less trusting of national elected leaders or the divisions of government that they represent. They see and sense the hypocrisy. They feel instinctively the inconsistency of blurring the legal process with abuse of office needed to maintain political power.
One definition of surreal is disorienting reality. In the emotional tenor of Attorney General James’ own descriptive phrase, “the art of the deal” is “the art of the steal” has now become the art of the surreal.
There’s a moral pollical difference between real and surreal. Elected officials are crossing the lines for political advantage. The American people are left to their own means to evaluate truth.
Democracy is not threatened by the political debate. Democracy is threatened by elected officials who refuse to discipline themselves to respect the protocol of rule of law….
And let the public determine for themselves….truth.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?