Judging Freedom - NY AG Sues Trump for Fraud

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

New York's civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and family members https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/21/politi... #TRUMP #lawsuitSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, September 21st, 2022. It's about 2.35 in the afternoon. About an hour and a half ago, Letitia James, who's the Attorney General of the State of New York, filed a civil lawsuit against the Trump Organization, former President Donald Trump personally and his three adult children, as well as a variety of entities owned or controlled by the Trump family and several executives employed by the Trump organization, a lot of defendants in this case, alleging a massive fraudulent scheme to inflate the value of his assets and his personal wealth in order to impress banks and insurance companies to provide loans for more money than the banks would otherwise have provided and to insure the property at more properties at more value than they were truly worth. This is a 225-page complaint. That's the best summary of it that I can give. At the end of the complaint, and it lists in exc and his family members be barred from running any Trump

entity for five years in the state of New York and be barred from their licenses to run Trump entities in New York forever. It then asks for a disgorgement, that is a return of the monies which it claims Trump and his family unlawfully gained from this, which it estimates at a quarter of a billion dollars. So it's basically saying he lied and he cheated. He lied to his own accountants. He lied to his own bankers. He lied to his own insurance companies. Everybody relied on those lies. And as a result, he earned $250 million, which he shouldn't have earned and wouldn't have earned if he told the truth. And therefore, he's got to cough that money back. That's the complaint in a nutshell. The former president never wanted to mince words, said this when he learned about the complaint. Attorney General Letitia Peekaboo James, I don't know why he calls

her Peekaboo, maybe somebody knows, a total crime fighting disaster in New York, I'm reading this literally, is spending all of her time fighting for very powerful and well-represented banks and insurance companies who are fully paid, made a lot of money, and never had a complaint about me, instead of fighting murder and violent crime, which is killing New York State. She is a failed AG whose lack of talent in the fight against crime is causing record numbers of people and companies to flee New York by buy. Now, some of this is accurate. It is true that these banks didn't complain that he didn't pay the money back. So even if they loaned him more money than they should have, even if they loaned him around these numbers out, a billion dollars on a building that was only worth 750 million,

because he told them it was worth $2 billion. He paid the billion back. So it is true that he paid the money back. But that, of course, does not change the law. The law still says if you lie or cheat to obtain a loan, even if you paid the loan back, you have to discourage whatever benefit or you may be liable to discouragement for

whatever benefit you obtained on the loan, from the loan, from the funds loaned. In terms of chastising the Attorney General for not fighting crime, I don't know why he's doing that. In New York, I know this sounds crazy, but it's true. In New York, the Attorney General does not fight crime. Crime is fought by the district attorneys of each of the counties of New York. The Attorney General can't arrest anybody. She can't accuse anybody of a crime. She can't prosecute anybody. That's not her job.

This is not her fault. That's the way the New York State Constitution is set up. In fairness to Trump, he may not know this, but he's chastising her for not doing something that she can't do and that is not her job. So look, this is a civil lawsuit. She also says in a statement filed or made public along with the lawsuit that all of this is a series of criminal acts, and she has referred her evidence to federal prosecutors in lower Manhattan to see if they want to prosecute the former president and his family members and his present and former top-ranking executives to whom he is not related. It's a civil lawsuit against the former president. He can't be arrested for it. I don't know where it's going to go. Maybe he'll settle it and cough up the $250 million and

it goes away. Maybe it'll take years and years and years of litigation and lawyers earning fees before it's resolved. I don't know. It is, however, just another legal woe for the former president of the many that are already confronting him. Coughing up a quarter of a billion dollars is not going to make anybody happy. He may do that to get rid of this. On the other hand, he believes that this is a political stunt, that there is no basis for it, and that he doesn't owe a nickel. So my prediction is this thing is going to be litigated out, meaning it will take years and years before it's resolved and before it ever reaches a jury. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.