patrick.net

Draw back from the scene and understand that the sheer heaping-up of procedural legal bullshit in the various sham court cases against candidate Donald Trump is largely an attempt to confound, mystify, and preoccupy the public while the great scaffold of our national life collapses. The news — both legacy and alt — will be dominated day after day by analyses of every move and counter-move through endless thickets of courtroom minutiae while the US economy crashes and burns, residual wealth is confiscated, and the American social order turns into something like fiery goo.

By November of 2024, somebody will be elected president, or no one will be. At this point, it is probably down to an election that more than half the country won’t believe in, or no election at all due to civil chaos so extreme it will make the 1861 weeks of secession look as tame as a middle school fire drill. Beyond the hamstringing and hog-tying of their chief adversary, the Democratic Party lawfare necromancers have set up the gameboard with surpassing precision so that their opponents will never be able to win another election. Yet, they are so self-satisfied as to apparently think no one noticed. (We’ll be coming for you, eventually, Marc Elias.)

Viral Video Shows 10 Minutes of Democrats Denying Election Results

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1540055374572797954

Those who dominate culture now seem to believe they are still the most interesting people in the world with the most interesting things to say. But because they’re so disconnected from the desperate cries of the working class, they can’t possibly tell stories that resonate with the majority.

A counterculture revolution, and maybe even a political one, is coming because the people “out there” will demand it. We’re already seeing signs of it everywhere, but recognizing it requires stepping out of the protective bubble the Left has built for itself.

Do they really believe on the Left that they can end the Trump movement by convicting him and throwing him in jail? Do they think that’s the best approach to deal with a populist revolution, culturally and politically? Do they think that censorship on sites like YouTube and GoFundMe is the way to quiet the rising discontent of the people they have abandoned?

Yes, they do because no one has told them otherwise. But you can’t stop what’s coming.

Yesterday, the Associated Press breathlessly reported on the first court decision against President Trump, in a story headlined “Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks, insurers while building real estate empire.”

Ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by woke, Soros-funded New York Attorney General Letitia James, New York state judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and his company had “deceived” banks, insurers and others by “massively overvaluing” his assets and “exaggerating his net worth” on applications and financial statements used while making real-estate deals and securing bank loans.

The first thing to understand about the decision is that no one was harmed. Trump paid all his loans back in full, on time. Letitia’s case is only about what Trump put down on the financial statements that were provided to extremely sophisticated financial professionals who didn’t rely on them. Letitia and Judge Engoran relied on a goofy New York law criminalizing “falsifying” financial documents — a unique law that doesn’t require even one single victim.

That’s bad enough. But it gets a LOT worse.

This case is right in my wheelhouse; I’ll explain the whole thing. It’s not complicated. The judge’s 35-page decision is, at bottom, only about how President Trump valued his real estate holdings when he was providing his personal financial statement to various people. ...

Principle number one: Real estate valuation is not a science because values are subjective. Every effort to value real estate is just a guess at what someone will eventually be willing to pay for the land. Your dilapidated barn might be someone else’s castle.

Real estate — buildings and land — is worth different amounts to different people. A thousand acres of inexpensive pine forest zoned only for agricultural use could be worth a whole lot more to a developer who’s confident he can get a zoning change. It’s not nefarious. Maybe that developer also owns a half-acre parcel downtown somewhere that the County has long wanted for a park, so he knows he has something to trade the commissioners for rezoning the pine forest to residential.

That hypothetical developer would pay a lot more for the thousand acres than anyone else. So what’s the property worth? The price to everyone else or the “highest and best use?”

But legal disputes must be resolved and you have to start somewhere. Lawyers think about real estate values in three general categories, depending on who is doing the valuing. From lowest value to highest, the normal categories are: the tax appraised value (the lowest, and least likely to be accurate), the “forced liquidation” value (think foreclosure sale), and then the highest, the “market” value (determined by professional appraisers who assume that the seller can market the property without pressure or time constraints).

Even professional appraisers disagree on land value. Every single one of my cases involves competing appraisals, and the appraisers’ numbers are often wildly different. Lawyers and judges all know that appraisals are just guesses. When I negotiate with bank lawyers, I often offer to bet them a month’s salary that when the appraised property finally sells, it will bring a price at least 15% different than the bank’s appraisal. In all these years, no opposing lawyer has ever taken that bet.

A fourth category of valuation is the owner’s opinion of his property’s value. Even though an owner might not be a real estate expert, the law considers the owner well positioned to know the value of their own property. They probably think about it a lot. They know all the pro’s and con’s.

Therefore under the law, an owner’s opinion is admissible evidence of value.

The lowest valuation is usually the tax appraised value, which is the amount used by the state to calculate annual property taxes. There’s a good reason why it’s the lowest: tax appraisers calculations are limited in many ways under state law. For example, in Florida tax appraisers can’t increase the value of homestead property — where someone lives — more than a few percentage points at a time. Tax appraisers also can only change the assessment when certain things happen, like when a property is sold.

Judge Engoran ruled yesterday that Trump had “inflated” his property values on his financial statements. Meaning, the judge decided what the properties were worth and then found that Trump overestimated Trump’s values — on paper. Take for example Trump’s residence, Mar-a-Lago, which the judge determined was worth $18 million for the entire ten-year period between 2011 and 2021.

That determination was based only on the county tax assessor, who appraised its value between $18 and $27 million. So of course the Judge used the lowest number in that range, $18 million, comparing that to Trump’s value of between $426 million and $612 million:

Nobody would use the tax appraiser’s value to guess at Mar-a-Lago’s selling price. Nobody. ...

So Forbes estimated Mar-a-Lago’s value between $200 million and $725 million, based on broker opinions, and ultimately went with “a conservative” $350 million. Mar-a-Lago is spectacular, historic, all-stone, luxury oceanfront property that looks like a castle and is the size of a small hotel. For comparison, a 5-bedroom home recently sold in the same neighborhood for $75 million.

The $18 million value is a joke. Except nobody’s laughing.

And it gets even worse. All of Trump’s financial statements — again, provided to sophisticated financial professionals — included a prominent disclaimer saying that actual real estate values could be wildly different than what was put down.The judge even reprinted the disclaimer in full in his opinion...

But Judge Engoran breezily waved the disclaimer aside, in essence holding that Trump should have known better anyway. The judge then went through all Trump’s other LLCs and properties and applied the same logic, finding Trump’s guesses at the value of his real estate were “false.”

The practical effect, as I read the order, is that the judge has ordered Trump to stop doing business in New York, and ordered Trump’s properties to be fire-sold under a court-appointed receiver. Again — even though nobody was harmed.

I assume President Trump’s lawyers will appeal this awful decision. Stay tuned.

I think judge realized that he cannot decide about value of real estate. Judge always hire professionals. This only proof that the case has political aspect.

REpro says

I think judge realized that he cannot decide about value of real estate. Judge always hire professionals. This only proof that the case has political aspect.

None of this shit matters. The result is people are becoming aware that we don't have an actual judicial system.

Don't understand and don't want to understand that someday same system can bite them.

REpro says

Don't understand and don't want to understand that someday same system can bite them.

That day is definitely coming soon if Trump wins.

There are plans to revamp both the FBI and DoJ and then sick them on Democrats and their donors.

There are plans to revamp both the FBI and DoJ and then sick them on Democrats and their donors.

Ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by woke, Soros-funded New York Attorney General Letitia James, New York state judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and his company had “deceived” banks, insurers and others by “massively overvaluing” his assets and “exaggerating his net worth” on applications and financial statements used while making real-estate deals and securing bank loans.

The first thing to understand about the decision is that no one was harmed. Trump paid all his loans back in full, on time. Letitia’s case is only about what Trump put down on the financial statements that were provided to extremely sophisticated financial professionals who didn’t rely on them. Letitia and Judge Engoran relied on a goofy New York law criminalizing “falsifying” financial documents — a unique law that doesn’t require even one single victim.

That’s bad enough. But it gets a LOT worse.