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Donald Trump thread v2.0


Muda69

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1 hour ago, temptation said:

Depends upon whom is his opposition...might be the lesser of two evils, lol.

Yeah, well you all probably what I believe about the voting for the "lesser of two evils" scenario, which is what the uni-party has presented to this country for at least the last 30 years.

 

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1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Yeah, well you all probably what I believe about the voting for the "lesser of two evils" scenario, which is what the uni-party has presented to this country for at least the last 30 years.

 

Not sure I am making that mistake three consecutive times...

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Trump’s Toast, Folks

https://www.cato.org/blog/third-times-charm

Quote

Up until now, I’ve been hesitant to predict how the various prosecutions of Donald Trump are likely to turn out. But no longer. I believe yesterday’s indictment in Georgia sealed Trump’s fate, and it is now all but certain that he will be convicted of multiple felonies in one or more of the four pending cases against him. Here’s why.

The Georgia indictment is a bombshell—the equivalent of a Texas Hold’em poker player shoving their entire stack of chips into the middle of the table and declaring, “All in.” In sum, the Georgia indictment alleges that Trump orchestrated a sprawling criminal conspiracy (or “enterprise,” in the language of the indictment and Georgia’s state RICO statute) involving more than 20 named and unnamed co‐conspirators ranging across half‐a‐dozen states for the purpose of unlawfully changing the result of the November 2020 presidential election. There is nothing subtle or nuanced about this indictment—in effect, it accuses Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, and a dozen others of staging an unsuccessful coup. If the case goes to trial, which seems likely, the jury will either believe that characterization or they will not. I think they will, for three reasons.

1. Trump’s disdain for truth. America has seen its fair share of lying politicians, but Donald Trump is in a class of his own. He appears to view literally any interaction with another human being as an opportunity to be exploited and a game to be won. In Trump’s world, rules are for chumps, norms are for losers, and the truth is whatever you can get another person to believe— nothing more. And of course, history makes clear that this approach has been quite effective at advancing Trump’s interests in certain settings—preening on the set of a game show, for example, or spinning up a fawning, frothing crowd at a campaign event.

But not only will those antics not work in a courtroom, they will backfire. Given the nature of the allegations against him, Trump will have to take the stand even though he has a right not to, and given his nature, he will lie to the jury just like he has lied to everyone else his entire life.

Trump will look those jurors in the eye and tell them that not only did he believe the election was stolen at the time, he still believes it now and in fact it was stolen. And Trump will double down on his risible assertion that his post‐election harangue of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—during which Trump demanded that Raffensperger “find” 12,000 votes in order to flip the result there and suggested that Raffensperger might be committing a criminal offense if he failed to do so—was “an absolutely PERFECT phone call.” Moreover, some of Trump’s co-defendants—Mark Meadows, perhaps, or Jeffrey Clark—will cut deals with the prosecution to save their own skins, and Trump will, with great bombast and zero credibility, falsely accuse them of lying when they testify honestly and plausibly about who said and did what.

At the end of the day, the jury will have to decide who was lying to them—a parade of credible and often highly sympathetic prosecution witnesses, or Donald Trump—and he will make it easy for them.

2. Trump’s disdain for process. Again, Donald Trump doesn’t see the world the way normal people do. Instead of institutions to be respected and rules to be followed, he sees marks to be gulled and systems to be gamed—emphatically including elections and trials. Trump’s complete disdain for fair procedures—and for people who meekly accept the results of those procedures when they lose—will be on full display throughout every stage of all four of the criminal cases against him. As we have already seen, Trump will not be able to resist the temptation to manipulate the process by threatening or cajoling witnesses, insulting prosecutors, and slagging judges who rule against him. Then, having displayed nothing but contempt for the proceedings, Trump or his counsel will turn to the jurors at the end of each trial and remind them of their solemn civic duty to carefully consider the evidence, arguments, and burden of proof—and render a verdict of acquittal. The jurors will remember their civic duty, alright, and they will condemn Trump for disregarding his.

3. Complexity. The third reason Trump will be convicted in one or more of the cases against him is this: complexity. Litigation is a complicated process featuring an often mind‐numbing interplay of procedural rules, substantive laws, court filings, documents, discovery, fact witnesses, expert witness, and a constant procession of unforeseen twists and turns that evoke the maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy. And that complexity multiplies geometrically with the number of related proceedings going on at the same time, which means that Trump’s legal teams will find it nearly impossible to coordinate across all four of the ongoing prosecutions in New York, Florida, DC, and now Georgia. But it’s even worse than that.

Litigation complexity is hard enough to manage with a client who plays it straight, both with the court and with their own counsel. But Trump doesn’t play it straight—he never has, and it appears he’s constitutionally incapable of doing so. So he will lie: in court, in public, on social media and—fatally—to his own lawyers. Simply put, Trump’s defense teams will not be able to keep track of all the different positions their client has taken (or directed his various lawyers to take in different proceedings), and eventually things will come completely unraveled. Judges will become increasingly disgusted by the shenanigans and stop giving Trump any benefit of the doubt; there will also be internecine squabbling among members of his defense teams, and some will likely quit when they refuse to execute some of their client’s more unethical demands or realize that he has no qualms about taking them down with him when the time comes.

One last point. These three dynamics are not isolated and discrete; instead, they’re dynamic and mutually reinforcing. Being an inveterate liar is a major liability in litigation. So is being openly disdainful of the entire process. And so is complexity. But put all three of those together at the same time for the same defendant, and his goose is cooked. So you can put a fork in Donald Trump—he’s done.

 

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The Biden DOJ is doing everything it can to bury Trump in legal issues the entire campaign season.  SF fully believes the former President will be found guilty of at least one or more of the indictments.  There is no way (especially in Georgia) that there will be even close to an impartial jury in all (if any) of the jurisdictions, so yeah, he's gonna get convicted.  

The question is what will SCOTUS do when this gets to them, and yes it will get to them. 

The establishment wants to ensure no one outside of their bubble EVER thinks they can get back in.

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No denying this is nothing more than a planned and coordinated assault to the Trump Presidential campaign, not an honest attempt at justice......

Ex-Reagan Official - "Stalin would be proud of Trump's Atlanta Indictment"

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trumps-proposed-atlanta-court-date-super-tuesday-eve-planned-coordinated-attorney-general

A former top lawman at the Department of Justice called the Atlanta prosecutor's proposed commencement trial date for former President Donald Trump an example of how the proceedings against him are politically designed to upend his surging candidacy.

Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker keyed into Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis' announcement of a proposed date of March 4, 2024 to begin proceedings against the former president over election-related allegations – which would fall one day before the crucial Super Tuesday contests.

"They've now scheduled this first trial on the day before Super Tuesday – whe[n] 15 states plus American Samoa are going to go vote," Whitaker said on "Hannity." 

"And if you're thinking you can prepare for a trial and visit 15 states in the lead up to Super Tuesday, I mean, that's going to be impossible."

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas will all hold primaries on March 5. 

"What Gregg [Jarrett] is saying is absolutely right," Whitaker later added. "This is all planned and coordinated in order to try to prevent Donald Trump from being strong enough to win the election in November."

Jarrett, a Fox News legal analyst, opined that prosecutors like Willis are hoping to convict Trump or at least "sully [him] sufficiently to enable Joe Biden to win."

 

 

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Nikki Haley Burned Trump and Her Fellow Republicans for Blowing Up the Debt. She's Right.

https://reason.com/2023/08/23/nikki-haley-burned-trump-and-her-fellow-republicans-for-blowing-up-the-debt-shes-right/

Quote

When it comes to runaway federal spending, unsustainable levels of borrowing, and the inflation that those first two things have helped unleash, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Wednesday that Republicans better look in the mirror.

"The truth is that Biden didn't do this to us, our Republicans did this to us too," Haley said during the early moments of Wednesday's Republican primary debate. She pointed specifically to Republican support in Congress for COVID stimulus bills and other recent spending packages. "They need to stop the spending, they need to stop the borrowing, they need to eliminate the earmarks that Republicans brought back in," she said.

Then she delivered the hammer blow: "And Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for this," Haley said.

She nailed it.

 

Trump promised to pay off the national debt within eight years when he was running for office in 2016. When he got to the White House, the national debt was a little less than $20 trillion. He, uh, didn't pay it off. Instead, federal spending climbed each of the first three years that Trump was in office—from $3.98 trillion in fiscal year 2017 to $4.45 trillion in 2019—then exploded in 2020 due to emergency COVID-19 spending. (For the first two years of Trump's term, Republicans also had full control of Congress, so there is a lot of blame to go around.)

When he left, the national debt was nearing $28 trillion. Today, it stands at $32.7 trillion.

Republicans have predictably swung back to a message of fiscal restraint during President Joe Biden's time in office, seemingly forgetting that the fiscal years of 2017 and 2018 ever existed.

Haley shining a spotlight on the bipartisan role of borrowing and spending in recent years was a welcome moment—and a powerful one for Haley, who stood out during Wednesday's sometimes chaotic debate. And it's critical for whoever wins next year's presidential election to be clear-eyed about the seriousness of the debt problem facing the federal government.

Agreed. Uni-party to the max.  Neither side really cares about the nation debt anymore.  And that is going to destroy this country.

 

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  • 1 month later...

At what point is it "fraud" if the banks he "defrauded" made money?  This case is only being brought to distract from the upcoming election.....The real estate game is played this way all the time.  If he gets jail time over this, then every real estate developer that lists properties higher than the actual worth (which is everyone of them) deserves jail as well.  Don't stop there, get the auto manufacturers who set very unrealistic MSRP's that dealers utilize........

https://nypost.com/2023/10/02/judge-implores-media-to-stop-saying-he-valued-mar-a-lago-at-18m/

The Manhattan judge deciding Donald Trump’s fate at his civil fraud trial on Monday stood by the $18 million valuation of the former president’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate — despite real estate experts blasting the estimate as “utterly delusional.”

Justice Arthur Engoron again rejected Trump’s claims that Mar-a-Lago is worth $1 billion in favor of the much-lower valuation issued by local Florida officials.

However, Engoron implored the media to stop reporting that he’d been the one to value the golf club and resort at $18 million — the low-end of a determination made by the Palm Beach assessor that has left many real estate industry insiders perplexed.

One prominent Palm Beach real estate broker labeled the valuation as “utterly delusional” to The Post.

“Please, press, stop saying that I valued it at $18 million,” Engoron pleaded, as trial kicked off in Manhattan Supreme Court in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million lawsuit against the former president, the Trump Organization and sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

The judge interjected the comment as Trump lawyer Alina Habba had been repeating during her opening remarks that the Palm Beach estate would sell for roughly $1 billion — a figure that Engoron rejected last week in a bombshell ruling.

In his decision, Engoron — who is deciding the trial rather than a jury — cited a local Palm Beach County official saying the country club had been assessed at a range of between $18 million and $27 million between 2011 and 2021.

In the same decision, Engoron rejected Trump’s expert’s valuation that the Florida estate was worth $1.5 billion finding the expert’s opinion “unexplained and unsubstantiated ‘dream[s.]'”

Industry experts were left scratching their heads at the Palm Beach assessor’s seemingly low estimation, claiming that the resort would list closer to $300 million.

Engoron’s ruling found Trump liable for fraud — the key claim in James’ suit — for exaggerating the worth of his assets.

He sided with the AG finding that Trump had fraudulently inflated his net worth — including with his claim that his Trump Tower triplex was 30,000 square feet when it was actually closer to 11,000.

Engoron also revoked Trump’s business licenses in the Big Apple and said a receiver needed to be appointed to wind down his companies in the Empire State.

Trump, 77, attended the first day of trial at the 60 Centre Street courthouse in lower Manhattan prompting protesters to come out in force and block a street outside the historic building.

James also attended the trial, looking on from the first row as Eric Trump — the executive vice president of Trump Org — watched from the second row.

The case is expected to last through Dec. 27 and could see witnesses testify including Trump, Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, former Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg and former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen.

In his opening statements AG’s office lawyer Kevin Wallace accused Trump of pumping up his net worth in part due to vanity and wanting to move up on Forbes’ billionaires list.

An apparently damning video clip was played of Cohen’s deposition, in which the ex-Trump lawyer described how his boss instructed him and Weisselberg to inflate his worth from $6 billion to $8 billion.

“‘I think I’m actually worth $8 billion,'” Cohen recalled Trump allegedly saying in the video.

Meanwhile Trump’s lawyers told Engoron during their opening statements that the AG’s case is based on the word of Cohen — a convicted felon.

“The government hinges its proof of conspiracy on a serial liar,” Christopher Kise charged.

Habba, meanwhile, attempted to punch holes in the AG’s argument that Trump inflated his assets to get better loan and bank terms, at the expense of the lenders and insurers.

“These banks made money. They were not defrauded,” Habba told the court. “That is not fraud. That is real estate.”

Trump blasted the case before entering the courtroom at the beginning of the day and again when he left during the lunch break.

He called it a “disgraceful trial,” at the midday break.

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  • 3 months later...

Governor DeSantis will NOT be down for breakfast......

The party will now (begrudgingly in some cases) coalesce around Trump.  Former SC Governor Haley (eventually) will fall in line.  How long it takes her to do that will determine how well the Republican Party still likes her.

Either Republican candidate/administration will be exponentially better than the current President (or whoever is really pulling the strings for the Democrat Party) 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeahbut - On January 6, 2020, wasn't Donald Trump still the President?  I think the inauguration of President Biden (who in no possible way was able to legally garner the most votes of any President in history) wasn't until January 20......JS

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/06/trump-immunity-appeal-dc-circuit

A federal appeals court said Tuesday that former President Trump is not immune from prosecution in his federal 2020 election trial.

Why it matters: The decision is a setback for the former president, who has argued that he is immune from prosecution over his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.

Driving the news: "For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant," the three-judge panel wrote in a Tuesday filing.

  • "But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution."

 

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Wow - the former UN Ambassador lost the Nevada Primary to a (we assume) guy who wasn't even on the ballot.....

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13059299/Trump-set-sweep-Nevada-caucuses-Nikki-Haleys-embarrassing-loss-no-one-senior-advisor-Kash-Patel-reveals-got-trounced-ex-president-wasnt-ballot.html

Donald Trump is preparing for a second victory in Nevada as he heads to Las Vegas for the caucuses Thursday following his symbolic win on Tuesday.

Republican voters in the Battle Born State selected 'none of these candidates' at a 32.9 percent higher rate than opting to vote for Nikki Haley in Nevada's primary election.

Even Donald Trump's team was shocked by the amount of Nevada voters willing to cast their ballot for no one instead of former U.N. Amb. Haley, who is the final primary competitor for the former president.

Kash Patel, a senior advisor to Trump, told DailyMail.com during an interview in Las Vegas on Wednesday that Haley 'overshot' by thinking she could avoid campaigning at all in Nevada and still win the primary on Tuesday.

'Maybe you wouldn't have got trounced by no one if you showed up and put in the work,' Patel said of Haley's campaign. 'This is emblematic of the whole entire thing. Like, where do you go with that? You, the billion-dollar candidate, lost to no one.'

'We convinced 45,000 people to circle 'none of the above' – that's insane,' he lauded. 'That's better than write-in candidate levels.'

Donald Trump Senior Advisor Kash Patel led efforts to get 'none of these candidates' on Nevada's primary ballot on Tuesday. He told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that not even he expected that option to beat Nikki Haley by a 32.9% margin

Without Trump on the ballot, Haley still managed to walk away in second place with 30.5 percent of the vote to the 63.3 percent that the option 'none of these candidates' received.

The State of Nevada decided to run a primary election this year after decades of holding caucuses, leading to a slew of confusion and dueling primary and caucus contests.

Instead of risking losing supporters to this year's kerfuffle, Patel and other Nevada Republicans launched an effort to educate voters on how they could participate in both the primary election on Tuesday, February 6 and caucuses on Thursday, February 8.

The feat, Patel conceded, was not easy – with many Nevada voters remaining confused over this process up until election day.

One Republican voter who spoke with DailyMail.com outside a polling place in Clark County on Tuesday was upset to find that Trump's name was not on the ballot when he showed up to cast his ballot.

'I don't know why they don't have Trump's name on the ballot, it's r****ded,' Robert Simonelli, 63, said before marching back into the library where he decided to vote for 'none of these candidates.'

Haley was only on the ballot for the primary on Tuesday, while Trump is participating in the caucus on Thursday. The caucuses, the Nevada GOP determined, is the only way to earn delegates for the nomination this year. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Who were the victims of this "crime"?  Banks loaned money for a negotiated interest rate, Trump, Inc. paid them back and the banks profited.  Why the $350 million fine for a $0, victimless "crime" that will eventually be overturned?  What is SF missing here except that the "ruling class" really doesn't want him as President again?

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4473988-eric-trump-slams-new-york-fraud-ruling/

Eric Trump slammed the nearly $355 million fine levied on his father, former President Trump, by New York Judge Arthur Engoron Friday in the civil fraud trial, calling it “horribly sad.”

“My father built a skyline of New York City. And this is the thanks he gets for doing absolutely nothing wrong, not a dollar of financial loss? The exact opposite, hundreds of millions of dollars in financial gain,” the younger Trump said Friday evening on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

“Every single witness testified we have nothing to do with this. They went in, witness after witness, this is not what they did in the company. It didn’t matter to this guy. You know, we were trophies on a wall for this guy,” he added. “This is the state of New York.”

Eric Trump’s rebuke of the Empire State comes hours after the former president was ordered to pay more than $355 million for conspiring to inflate and deflate his net worth to receive tax and insurance benefits. Engoron had already found Trump, and his top executives — including Eric Trump and his oldest son Donald Trump Jr., who serve as executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization — liable for fraud before the months-long trial began.

The verdict is less than the $370 million that Attorney General Letitia James (D) requested. However, once interest is applied, the office said the fine could reach about $450 million.

Both of Trump’s adult sons were ordered to pay more than $4 million each and barred from serving in top business roles in the state for up to two years. The former president was banned for three years.

Eric Trump railed against the state’s leadership, echoing his father’s claim that the lawsuit was political from the start.

“I caution anybody. I caution anybody even thinking about moving to New York to just be careful. This is not the state that my father grew up in. This is not the state that we grew up in,” he told guest host Jeanine Pirro. “This is the demise of a politically weaponized system. And it’s horribly sad.”

“New York is a hopeless place at this point. It’s so sad. This judge ruled against my father before we even went to trial. He ruled against our entire family. It was a setup from the very beginning,” he added. “This was never supposed to be in that court. It was supposed to be in the commercial division. They would never allow it to get there.”

The younger Trump also vowed to appeal the decision, calling it “egregious.”

“I promise you we’re going to get it overturned,” he said.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
30 minutes ago, swordfish said:

SCOTUS says Individual States can't take the former President off the ballot by claiming insurrection.  

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/breaking-supreme-court-unanimously-overturns-colorado-ruling-throwing-trump-off-ballot/

That the opinion was unanimous is very significant. Increases the legitimacy of the decision … and the Court.

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2 hours ago, Bobref said:

That the opinion was unanimous is very significant. Increases the legitimacy of the decision … and the Court.

I didn’t watch.  Did the Supreme Court kick three field goals or was it a TD/XP/safety combo?  Either way, hell of a defensive effort.

Imagine thinking those wanting to let the people speak with their votes as the threat to democracy and not those trying to actively remove a party’s leading candidate from the ballot.

What a bunch of nut jobs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Atlanta - So the judge will allow only one perjurer to remain on the case, but not both......"Oh Dang" Evidence is such an inconvenience when you are trying to fib your way through something......

 

“Dang,” Merchant wrote back at the time. “They had a full on relationship.”

Bradley, however, tried to backtrack on the stand and said that the text conversation with Merchant was “speculation” — though he was heard muttering, “Oh, dang” when presented with copies of the exchange.

https://nypost.com/2024/03/15/us-news/georgia-da-fani-willis-can-remain-on-trump-election-fraud-case-judge-rules/

District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on and prosecute the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election — if special prosecutor Nathan Wade steps aside, a judge ruled Friday.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued the decision after deliberating for two weeks following testimony from Willis, Wade and others close to them.

In the decision, he noted that the defense had produced evidence of “a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team.”

However, he offered a choice, allowing Willis to continue if she drops Wade, with whom she has admitted being romantically involved, from her team.

“The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office … Alternatively, [special attorney] Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case,” McAfee wrote.

The allegations charged Willis had become romantically involved with Wade before 2021, when she appointed him special prosecutor in the election interference case, and claimed she benefited financially from his lucrative special prosecutor post when he treated her to luxurious vacations.

The relationship was first revealed by Trump co-defendant Mike Roman in a bombshell court filing that said the situation presented a conflict of interest and asked for Willis to be removed from the case.

Both Willis and Wade — who only reached a divorce agreement with his wife in January — admitted to the affair, but maintained under oath that the relationship only became official in 2022, after they had already brought the case against the former president and 18 others.

Trump, Roman and 13 co-defendants remain actively involved in the case. Four other co-defendants reached plea deals.

However, at the hearings into Willis’ conduct, witnesses presented testimony which contradicted the former lovers’ claims.

However, at the hearings into Willis’ conduct, witnesses presented testimony which contradicted the former lovers’ claims.

 

McAfee’s ruling was particularly damning of Willis and Wade’s conduct, calling it a “tremendous lapse in judgment” and adding that the defense raised “reasonable questions” about whether the pair had testified truthfully as to the timeline of their relationship.

Explaining his decision, McAfee wrote: “The court finds the allegations and evidence legally insufficient to support a finding of an actual conflict of interest” over Willis and Wade’s relationship.

However, he also noted that “the appearance of impropriety remains,” making his decision a split ruling, with some of the motions put forward by Trump and his co-defendants “granted in part and denied in part.”  

Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow was quick to respond: “While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade, including the financial benefits, testifying untruthfully about when their personal relationship began … We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place.”

In mid-February, Robin Yeartie — a former DA’s office employee who also claimed to be one of Willis’ longtime friends — testified that she had “no doubt” Willis and Wade were romantically linked as early as 2019.

1857
What do you think? Post a comment.

Yeartie said she saw the pair “kissing” and “hugging” at the time.

Wade’s former law partner and one-time divorce attorney Terrence Bradley also told Roman’s attorney Ashleigh Merchant in January that the affair “absolutely” started before Wade was appointed to the Trump case.

“It started when she left the DA’s office and was judge in South Fulton,” Bradley texted Merchant on Jan. 5, according to records that were referenced in court and later revealed in full on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.

Part of the allegations against Willis include that she financially benefited from appointing Wade to the plum role in the Trump case, notably when he paid for her to go on trips with him using cash earned on the job.

Bradley seemed to be aware of these excursions, texting to Merchant: “They took many trips to Florida…Texas….California.”

“Dang,” Merchant wrote back at the time. “They had a full on relationship.”

Bradley, however, tried to backtrack on the stand and said that the text conversation with Merchant was “speculation” — though he was heard muttering, “Oh, dang” when presented with copies of the exchange.

During closing arguments, Sadow pointed out that Willis and Wade purposely concealed their relationship until it was revealed in court in January.

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Interesting - So (quietly) AG James (NY) is OK with overvaluing property to entice better loans, except for when someone can actually pay it back......(like the Trump Organization)

https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/opinion/an-irish-society-an-unpaid-loan-and-the-hypocrisy-of-letitia-james/

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, here is a tale of financial shenanigans at the American Irish Historical Society, in which Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James is hoist with her own petard.

It involves a grand old building on Fifth Avenue, an unpaid loan, a fading family dynasty, a James Joyce theatrical production which almost ended in fisticuffs, and hypocrisy from the AG as obvious as a glass of green beer.

It all began when James Doyle, a wealthy Georgia businessman with a love of his Irish roots, joined the board of the nonprofit Society, whose jewel in the crown is a rare Gilded Age mansion at 991 Fifth Avenue, right across from Central Park and The Met. 

Over the years, financial mismanagement and misfortune had befallen the Society, and it was facing foreclosure. So, in 2017, the board turned to Doyle for a $3 million loan, structured like a private mortgage. He was told that the Beaux-Arts townhouse was worth $80 million that included valuable air rights.

However, the Society only made a few repayments and Doyle soon found things weren’t quite as they seemed.

The Society had been dominated for half a century by the Cahill family, and President Emeritus Dr. Kevin Cahill was accused of treating the townhouse as his own “private club,” with one of his four sons, Christopher, becoming its “well-compensated executive director,” according to the New York Times. Christopher earned $88,459 in 2020, and between $134,768 and $179,402 in previous years, according to IRS returns.

Cahill, a tropical-disease specialist said to have treated Pope John Paul II after he was shot, reportedly raised the money to renovate the mansion to its former glory when he took over in the 1970s. A stocky man with bushy white eyebrows, he would dress each year in morning coat and Irish tri-color sash to preside over the St. Patrick’s Day parade from its Fifth Avenue balcony. He held a grand annual gala where he would hand out gold medals to the great and the good.

Then, in 2019, his son Christopher, then 55, got embroiled in an ugly confrontation with the director of the Irish Repertory Theater, which was staging a play in the townhouse, adapted from the James Joyce short story, “The Dead.” 

“I’m going to kill you, Ciaran!” yelled Christopher, while lunging at the director after the performance, according to The Times.

The Society’s financial woes and dysfunction had reached crisis point by 2021, when Cahill tried to sell the building for $52 million (later reduced to $44 million).

He died the following year, and in stepped the New York Attorney General, citing a petition she had received opposing the sale. 

She announced that, by state law, any sale of a nonprofit asset had to be approved by her, effectively kyboshing the plan.

“It’s an amazing place,” James gushed to the Irish Voice. “We had to save it, had to save it … One day people can come in there and enjoy it again.”

Which was all very well, but Doyle still was owed $3 million.

The AG appointed an interim Board of Directors and Doyle was persuaded not to try to collect his money or foreclose on the mortgage before July 2023. 

But by August 2023, he still hadn’t been repaid, so he initiated foreclosure proceedings — and promptly was blocked by the AG, who claimed the mortgage was invalid because he was a board member.

On Friday, Doyle launched a lawsuit against the Society and requested a subpoena be issued against James requiring her to produce a raft of documents, including anything relating to campaign events hosted at the townhouse or any contributions to her political campaigns from the Society or any of its members or directors. 

Doyle’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, alleges that James’ enthusiastic involvement in the Doyle case may be driven by “connections with the Defendant.”

And he points out the uncanny similarities between his client’s predicament and the notorious case James brought against Donald Trump for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get a better mortgage, “although her office is now taking a polar opposite position.”

The lawsuit alleges that Doyle was given “fraudulently inflated valuations” of the townhouse, putting its market value at over $80 million. Dr. Cahill and the Society’s current President-General, James Normile, “made representations to [Doyle] that the building had ‘air rights’ and could be built, or rebuilt, higher than its current height. 

“In reality, there were no ‘air rights’ and the actual value is closer to $20 million. [The Society] made a gross over-valuation” of the townhouse, which induced Doyle to make the $3 million loan.

“Tish James said, ‘nobody is above the law,’ which should include Tish James, who seems to have actively aided and abetted in the Art of the Steal,” Parlatore told The Post.

NY District Attorney Letitia James holding an Irish flag while marching in the 2024 New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade.
 

“This organization fraudulently inflated the value of their building to induce my client into giving them a mortgage which Tish James is now trying to help these fraudsters avoid having to repay. 

“The theory of fraud Tish James accused the Trump Organization of engaging in is identical to the fraud she is aiding and abetting here.” 

James has come down on the side of the Society against its lender, Doyle. And yet, in her signature case of People v. Trump, she took the opposite position, holding that “where an organization inflates the value of a property to obtain a loan, that is fraud, even where the lender was aware of the actual value and was paid in full,” Doyle’s lawsuit says.

Trump was punished with a $355 million fine. So delighted was James by the verdict last month that she started live-tweeting Trump’s daily interest bill: “+$114,553.04.”

Parlatore points out that the Society inflated the value of its property to obtain a loan, just like Trump was accused of doing, but the difference was that Doyle could not conduct the sort of “sophisticated due diligence” that Deutsche Bank did. Therefore, unlike Trump’s lenders, Doyle didn’t know the true value of the townhouse. 

An even more important difference is that Trump paid back every penny he owed, but the Society never paid back Doyle. 

As the old Irish proverb says, forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.

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Trump:  If I lose this November, the American auto industry will suffer a “bloodbath” because of Biden pushing Chinese manufactured electronic vehicles.

The left wing media:  “Donald Trump is telling you exactly who he is and is threatening violence similar to January 6th were he to lose the election.”

JFC.

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1 hour ago, temptation said:

The left wing media:  “Donald Trump is telling you exactly who he is and is threatening violence similar to January 6th were he to lose the election.”

This has all the earmarks of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I fear.

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41 minutes ago, Bobref said:

This has all the earmarks of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I fear.

How can it not be? Apparently this is what the American citizens want. I see NO positive outcome from this election. My only hope is whoever loses shuts the f…up and rides off into the sunset…..

But we all know this ends in a shitstorm. 

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