State of New York vs Trump, et al - the civil fraud case against the Trump Organization

[Dave from down under]

What’s the odds of true?

Vs

Messing with Donnie’s timetable
And/or
More media coverage as the Israeli Hamas conflict drops down in the US media attention

[Kriselda Gray]

I don't see Cohen screwing with the court just to screw with Donnie or to get more publicity. Maybe I give him more credit than he deserves, he IS an admitted criminal after all, but what I've seen of him just doesn't lead me to believe he's playing games here.

[Gregg]

What’s the odds of true?

Vs

Messing with Donnie’s timetable
And/or
More media coverage as the Israeli Hamas conflict drops down in the US media attention

Fucking with Trump, made him come to NYC which I think he hates now.

[Kendra]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 744e&ei=11

Donald Trump's civil fraud lawsuit erupted into chaos on Wednesday when one of the former president's attorneys accused witness Doug Larson of lying.

The $250 million trial stems from a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022 alleging that Trump and other executives at the Trump Organization conspired to inflate the former president's net worth by billions of dollars on financial statements provided to banks and insurers in order to make deals and secure loans. Trump, who is dominating the GOP polls in his third presidential campaign, continues to deny any wrongdoing.

Larson, an appraiser whose name appears multiple times over years' worth of Trump's financial documents, began his testimony on Tuesday. The documents allege that building valuations were determined through multiple phone conversations with Larson for Trump properties like 40 Wall Street, Trump Tower and a retail area named Niketown.

When Larson was pressed by the state about the phone conversations on Tuesday, he said he didn't remember them. The state then suggested that the valuation numbers were calculated after using metrics sourced from a generic email Larson sent to his clients. Larson maintained that official appraisals should've been carried out on the buildings.

On Wednesday, Trump attorney Lazaro Fields cross-examined Larson about an email he received from Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney on August 5, 2013. McConney asked Larson to provide a report similar to one he had attached to the email. Larson previously denied having conversation with McConney regarding the 40 Wall Street property in 2016.
"You lied yesterday, didn't you?" Fields said to Larson.

[RTH10260]

no, it was not Orly Taitz

Woman arrested after trying to get close to Trump at New York trial; she says she’s a supporter

BY JENNIFER PELTZ AND MICHAEL R. SISAK
Updated 12:30 AM CEST, October 19, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — A spectator at Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial was arrested Wednesday after standing up in the middle of testimony and walking toward the front of the courtroom where the former president sat.

The woman expressed a desire to aid Trump, and the court system said that neither he nor anyone else at the trial was ever in danger. The ex-president and 2024 GOP front-runner showed no reaction in court and later told reporters he wasn’t aware of the episode that had unfolded behind him.

“Who got arrested?” Trump asked. “We didn’t know anything about it.”

The woman, later identified as a court system employee, retreated after a court officer told her to return to her seat. A short time later, officers escorted her out and arrested her on a contempt charge for disrupting a court proceeding, court spokesperson Lucian Chalfen said.



https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump ... cc4f40ce9b

[chancery]

https://twitter.com/stewartbishop/statu ... 4591728842

Stewart Bishop
@stewartbishop
Today for the first time, we're seeing reaction by AG Letitia James' office to explosive allegations from Forbes'
@DanAlexander21 that former Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg lied on the witness stand during his testimony last week.

The AG’s office filed a letter to the court saying that the defendants have apparently failed to turn over a set of emails surrounding inquiries by Forbes in 2016 about Trump’s net worth, between Weisselberg and someone from a commercial real estate investment firm.

Forbes claims that Weisselberg lied under oath about his involvement in the valuation of Trump's penthouse apartment at Trump Tower. Forbes said they had regular contact with him for their annual list of wealthiest people.

The Forbes piece, titled "Trump's Longtime CFO Lied, Under Oath, About Trump Tower Penthouse,” centered on Weisselberg’s testimony in which he agreed that Trump's pad was 10,996 sq. feet, not 30,000 sq. feet as Trump had claimed, but said he had little to do with the valuation.

Forbes says old emails and notes, some of which the attorney general's office doesn't have, show otherwise, and Weisselberg spent years trying to convince Forbes reporters that the penthouse was worth more than the publication believed.

Some further comments about this by Lisa Rubin, who is pretty sharp.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-sho ... rcna121195

You might be thinking, "So what? Is it really a big problem that the attorney general is missing certain emails from the Trump Org if it received them from the other party?"

Yes and no.

The attorney general's letter attaches a single example of an email produced by Marcus & Millichap that wasn't found in the Trump Org's own documents. That document, of course, is just an example, and one that is relatively costless for the attorney general's team to highlight. (Significantly, it has already been used as a trial exhibit.)

What that example might illustrate, on the other hand, is a potentially big problem, or as the attorney general describes it, "a breakdown somewhere in the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing and producing documents" despite years of work by the attorney general to "ensure a complete response to [the attorney general's] subpoenas."

More ominously, the attorney general's office observes that in light of "multiple affidavits on behalf of the Trump Org attesting to the completion of their production obligations," the fact that it can still point to missing documents is "also suggestive of potentially broader issues in the production process."

Just as it has not accused Weisselberg of false testimony, the attorney general's office also has not alleged that anyone associated with the Trump Org, from individual defendants to its outside counsel, has willfully or recklessly contributed to the destruction of evidence. But in asking that retired federal judge Barbara Jones, the current monitor overseeing limited financial reporting and other Trump Org obligations, not only "undertake a forensic examination" of the Trump Org's electronic data for August to September 2016, but also diagnose what happened and "propose remedies," the attorney general is arming itself for a larger battle over truth, consequences and the future of the Trump Org before it or anyone else even determines what recourse, if any, Weisselberg warrants.

The document preservation and production issues the attorney general raised Thursday are considerably less sexy than accusations of false testimony. But could they be part and parcel of the same spectrum of misconduct among those who believe the rules do not apply and that malfeasance doesn't count unless you're caught? You bet.

[poplove]

Trump Is About to Be Ripped to Shreds by NYC Bank Fraud Trial Judge

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is- ... ref=scroll

[chancery]

The ripping has commenced:

Off Topic

The post of the court's order is an image rather than text, so you'll need to look at the tweet to read it.

I wouldn't take the prison comment seriously. Failing to take the post down looks like sloppiness, not deliberate defiance of the order.

[Sam the Centipede]

I wouldn't take the prison comment seriously. Failing to take the post down looks like sloppiness, not deliberate defiance of the order.

But the order wasn't "don't leave anything nasty posted after someone asks for it to be taken down", it was to not propagate the nastiness.

Next time it should be prison, no excuses. Trump has FAed, he should FO.

[sad-cafe]

I agree

he has been given WAY too much liberty.

The rest of us would already be locked up

[bill_g]

I can see the Trump camp claiming with a wink and a nod:
It wasn't on a social media site. It was on a WEB site. (difference!)
It wasn't a post. It was a picture. (difference!)
Trump didn't post it. He has staff to do that. (difference!)

[p0rtia]

I would like to know the name of the employee who put the meme on the campaign website, and what conversations they had with what other employees when they heard about the gag order.

And to have a pony.

[bill_g]

[bob]

While this dovetails in with other issues, many attorneys (especially male attorneys) are like this.

[chancery]

[Next time it should be prison, no excuses. Trump has FAed, he should FO.

In a civil case, incarceration should only be used to coerce compliance with an order, not as a punishment for past misdeeds. At least that's the general rule.

[noblepa]

[Next time it should be prison, no excuses. Trump has FAed, he should FO.

In a civil case, incarceration should only be used to coerce compliance with an order, not as a punishment for past misdeeds. At least that's the general rule.

True, but he was ordered to refrain from such attacks and to remove any that had previously been posted. He failed to comply. A little coercion would seem to be in order.

[Sam the Centipede]

[Next time it should be prison, no excuses. Trump has FAed, he should FO.

In a civil case, incarceration should only be used to coerce compliance with an order, not as a punishment for past misdeeds. At least that's the general rule.

Of course you're the lawyer, I know nothing, but isn't there a contempt issue? I guess that still hits your criterion of not being about past action but about controling future behavior.

But anyway, on the next transgression, it would be reasonable to say "You have demonstrated that you will not voluntarily comply with orders, so you must go somewhere with no (or tightly controled) access to those media. Off to jail you go!"

Or not?

[chancery]

It's dimly coming back to me that even in a civil case there can sometimes be criminal contempt proceedings to punish past disobedience. Although also ISTR that criminal contempt is usually (but not always) restricted to disruptive behavior that occurs in the court's presence. Criminal contempt proceedings trigger Constitutional rights that require more process, which is one among many reasons why they are rare.

I thought I'd done a deep dive comparing and contrasting civil with criminal contempt at the old Fogbow, possibly in relation to one of the King v. Whitmer proceedings in Michigan, but I can't find it. And I know I've briefed it once or twice in real life, but the issue never went anywhere, so it remains a subject area that I can't keep straight in my head for more than a day or two after I've studied it.

[NewMexGirl]

It's dimly coming back to me that even in a civil case there can sometimes be criminal contempt proceedings to punish past disobedience. Although also ISTR that criminal contempt is usually (but not always) restricted to disruptive behavior that occurs in the court's presence. Criminal contempt proceedings trigger Constitutional rights that require more process, which is one among many reasons why they are rare.

I thought I'd done a deep dive comparing and contrasting civil with criminal contempt at the old Fogbow, possibly in relation to one of the King v. Whitmer proceedings in Michigan, but I can't find it. And I know I've briefed it once or twice in real life, but the issue never went anywhere, so it remains a subject area that I can't keep straight in my head for more than a day or two after I've studied it.

We are all so grateful for all the IAALs on the Fogbow!

[New Turtle]

It's dimly coming back to me that even in a civil case there can sometimes be criminal contempt proceedings to punish past disobedience. Although also ISTR that criminal contempt is usually (but not always) restricted to disruptive behavior that occurs in the court's presence. Criminal contempt proceedings trigger Constitutional rights that require more process, which is one among many reasons why they are rare.

I thought I'd done a deep dive comparing and contrasting civil with criminal contempt at the old Fogbow, possibly in relation to one of the King v. Whitmer proceedings in Michigan, but I can't find it. And I know I've briefed it once or twice in real life, but the issue never went anywhere, so it remains a subject area that I can't keep straight in my head for more than a day or two after I've studied it.

We are all so grateful for all the IAALs on the Fogbow!

[sugar magnolia]

While this dovetails in with other issues, many attorneys (especially male attorneys) are like this.

He also initially denied saying "no" when half the reporters present heard him say it.

[raison de arizona]

https://twitter.com/frankrunyeon/status ... 9495658807
While this dovetails in with other issues, many attorneys (especially male attorneys) are like this.

He also initially denied saying "no" when half the reporters present heard him say it.

I just want to go on the record as registering my surprise that Kise is a lying liar that lies obvious lies.

Par for the course on his side.

[chancery]

Judge Engoron's order:

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/D ... ystem=prod

[A} defendant may not evade liability for violating a court order by asserting that the violation was a result of the actions of one or more of the defendant's employees or agents.

Donald Trump has received ample warning from this Court as to the possible repercussions of violating the gag order. He specifically acknowledged that he understood and would abide by it. Accordingly, issuing yet another warning is no longer appropriate; this Court is way beyond the "Warning" stage.

Given defendant's position that the violation was inadvertent, and given that it is a first time violation, this Court will impose a nominal fine, $5,000 ...

Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him pursuant to New York Judiciary Law § 753.

[Dave from down under]

He won’t believe there will be sterner sanctions..

He doesn’t want to stop being what he is.

[sugar magnolia]

He won’t believe there will be sterner sanctions..

He doesn’t want to stop being what he is.

He probably won't pay the $5,000 either.