For decades, this guy has managed to dodge and delay any sort of accountability for most of the awful things he’s done. He didn’t escape responsibility because he was clever; he did it because he inherited a buttload of money, which allowed him to retain very expensive, highly skilled lawyers and accountants.
Trump’s entire reputation as a deal-maker and businessman was built on his access to those people. He was able to walk into meetings, make demands, then wander off while his legal-financial team worked out the details of the actual deal. Trump would then take credit for his team’s success (or blame them for the deal’s failure). But even the best lawyers and accountants couldn’t prevent Trump from fucking things up.
I mean, he had six (6!) corporate bankruptcies, and each time his lawyers/accountants were able to allow Trump to slide out from under his legitimate debts and remain in business. The guy bankrupted his own casinos, for fuck’s sake. How do you lose money running a casino? He’s been involved in numerous (at least 3500 lawsuits in the past 30 years) contract disputes (mostly for failure to pay his bills), tax cases, defamation claims, and allegations of sexual harassment. And, again, in almost all of those cases his lawyers/accountants protected Trump from serious criminal or financial harm.
But Trump being Trump, he also tended to stiff many of his lawyers out of their fees. Over time, that’s made it harder for him to hire effective counsel. Now, he finds himself scrabbling to find a good lawyer. After well-known litigator Marc Kasowitz withdrew his services last September, Trump engaged lawyer Alina Habba whose office is near his Bedminster, NJ golf club and whose biggest prior client was a parking garage company. (By the way, that doesn’t mean she’s not a good lawyer; it just means top tier lawyers have stopped taking Trump’s calls).
And now his accountants are taking a hike. A few days ago they completely severed their relationship with Trump and the Trump Organization. Looking beyond the delicate legal phrasing, his accountants basically said 1) they believe Trump has been lying about his assets and debts over the last decade, 2) they’ve seen/heard the evidence held by the Attorney General of New York–and they believe it, 3) Trump ought to cowboy up and inform his creditors of all this, and 4) they’re out the door, goodbye, good luck, you’re on your own.
Trump is going to face the same problem with accountants as he has with lawyers. No big hat accounting firm is going to pick up when he calls them. That’s a HUGE problem for him, because he owes a metric shit-ton of cash (at least US$400 million and up to about $1.1 billion) to various banks and lending institutions. He and his organization were able to borrow all that money based on the information Trump had provided to his accountants. Now that his accountants have pissed in his soup, it’s unlikely those banks will refinance his loans. It’s possible some of them will call in their loans.
If that’s not enough, a couple of days ago a NY judge agreed with the Attorney General of NY that Trump (and three of his feral children) must submit themselves for a deposition within 21 days. As always, he’s trying to delay that…and he may succeed for a while. But it’s pretty clear he’ll eventually be testifying under oath in a civil case. That’s a big deal for a couple of reasons. First, because Trump can’t/won’t stop lying. Lying under oath is a crime. I can’t see any situation in which Donald Trump can talk about his finances and not lie. Hell, I can’t imagine a situation in which Trump would talk about anything at all without lying.
Second, probably the only way Trump can avoid lying in a deposition is to invoke his 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. But that will also bite him on the ass. In a criminal case, a jury isn’t allowed to draw any adverse inference about a defendant who takes the 5th Amendment. In a civil case, a jury CAN assume that a defendant who takes the 5th is hiding something.
That’s just his civil legal problems. Trump is also facing a variety of criminal charges in at least two jurisdictions.
There’s a tsunami of trouble coming for Comrade Trump, and the legal breakwater that’s protected him for so long has eroded. The guy is fucked. He’s fucked. Totally and comprehensively fucked.
Probably.
gregfallis.com 
Nah.
Nothing will happen to him.
The oligarchy that is the United States will somehow show leniency with a slap on the wrist, or some corporate board will cave under threats from GOP lawmakers and give him an out. He’s fine.
What WILL happen is that the divide between everyday Americans will widen as everyone right of center cries foul at “the relentless witch-hunt of the left” that continues to try to take down Trump from every angle and by any means.
That you can bank on.
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You could be right. It wouldn’t shock me. But I think there’s a better than 50-50 chance he’ll end up losing most of his most valuable assets. Golf clubs, apartment complexes, stuff like that. He won’t be impoverished by any means, but I think he’s going to lose a lot of stuff. And I think there’s a very small but non-zero chance he’ll do some time.
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Where did you losers come from? Shouldn’t you be kissing up to lying libs
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So…what do you think? Russian trollbot or just another Trumpoid dolt?
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Door number one, Greg.
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I’m interested to hear your views on the Canadian truckers in due course.
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As I understand it, the Canadian truckers are mostly funded by right-wing Americans. I haven’t looked at the situation very closely, but it sounds like another astro-turf faux-grassroots movement. I AM curious about the weaponry the police seized, though.
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Well I hadn’t heard that about it that way except they are all neo-nazi, white supremacists and insurrectionists. Besides that very little. You should do an article that details these things and also the evidence and money trail as it will be critical to crush any and all opposition to responsible leadership.
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Very few GOP lawmakers will call in chits to save Trump. They are terrified of him — or, rather, his mob of lunatics — but if they can stand back and let the Courts do their work, maybe throw in a tut-tut here and there, they would LOVE to rid of him. The banks will get their money back if they can, which means calling in loans, repossessing assets. Unless he can get his millions to continue to send him millions (which he might) he’s gonna sink.
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He’ll soak his most loyal followers for as much as he can, but once the trials of the Oathkeepers begin I think a lot of folks who mistakenly believed they could count on him will be unhappily enlightened.
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If he gets little to no comeuppance due to the wealth and class division that has protected him thus far that little fact will be used by his minions as proof, *PROOF I TELL YOU!*, that any attempts at investigation and prosecution are nothing more than the witch hunt he has always claimed.
If he suffers, finally, some kind of loss due to his own actions that will be taken as proof by the evangelical “we own the world because god said so” types that he is, in fact, chosen by their god. Why else would their hero be allowed to become a martyr.
Or so I fear.
We are reaping the consequences of allowing the rich and powerful get away with everything – as long as they are Republicans, of course. Any deviation from letting them get away with everything is now considered an evil liberal attack on the pillars of society and the communities they inhabit.
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I’d argue that the rich and powerful liberals also mostly get away with everything. Getting away with everything is more an aspect of being rich and powerful than political persuasion. That said, conservatives generally think getting away with everything is proof they’re superior, whereas liberals just think the system is working for them. At least that’s how I see it.
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Look at that, I did claim a difference between Democrat offenders and Republican offenders.
I was trying to think of compare/contrast examples and most of the Dem examples getting sacrificed just weren’t that powerful. The highest ranking Dem I’ve come up with is Al Franken.
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Watching this as an outsider, the main difference seems to be that the Democrats are nowhere near as ruthless and have a tendancy to “eat their own.” I loved Michelle O’bama’s,
“When they go low, we go high.”
However watching from the sidelines, I am not all that hopeful. i would like to see drastic action taken on voting. Stop the destruction of people’s voting rights once and deal swiftly with those, who deny people’s rights,
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“It’s possible some of them will call in their loans.”
From some of the financial news I’ve read, loan agreements for amounts that he’s taken out almost always have clauses that essentially say “Bitch better have my money today!” if the loan was granted on the basis of fraudulent information.
I’m no financial guru, hell I was never good at balancing my checkbook, but it seems to me that the banks would/should be seriously worried about the legal implications and fiduciary duty and start to act accordingly.
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The problem…and yeah, I know this is obvious, but it still bears repeating…is that we’re talking about a grifter who was actually the goddamn president of the US. Even if he’s an overt crook, people and institutions are going to hesitate before fucking with him.
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And he’s just the sort of grifter to complain, at top volume, that expecting or demanding him to cover his contractual obligations or to follow the law rather than flout it – would be “fucking with him”.
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In Australia indigenous people were classed as “flora and fauna” till 1967 and were thus not allowed to vote. It took a vote on the constitution to change this.
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Wrong
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Clever.
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