This country as a collective whole has watched with disgust and despair, year after year, as Donald Trump has gotten away with what has felt like everything just short of cold-blooded murder. Over and over again, we’ve seen him successfully skirt justice and atonement for crimes we know good and well pretty much anyone else would be buried under the jail for by now. It seems to never fail, no matter what he’s been caught up to his neck in, the corrupt ex-president always manages to get away scot-free, without so much as a slap on the hand for what he’s done, and will obviously continue to do, devoid of any repercussions for his actions.
It’s frankly enough to drive a saint insane some days.
However, if legal experts are correct in their recent assessment, those days of unchecked freedom are soon going to come to a close for the scandal-ridden former guy, as Donald Trump hunkers down into a legal retreat following his repeated failures to successfully challenge the brutal New York law that’s serving as the driving force behind NY Attorney General Letitia James’ massive fraud lawsuit against the big guy.
Under New York’s Executive Law 63 (12) state attorney generals are granted the power and authority to launch investigations and initiate prosecutions. According to reporting from The Daily Beast, Trump’s recent series of failures in challenging this law will ultimately force the former president into coughing up an explanation as to why he repeatedly lied, for years, about his real estate portfolio and the finances behind it — and runs the risk of losing it all in the end.
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Bob Abrams, who served as New York attorney general from 1979 until 1993, said on the matter, “The language is broad. It talks about persistent fraud and illegality. She has the authority to protect the public from scammers.”
As we’re all well aware by now, James is seeking a whopping $250 million in the lawsuit, as well as the ultimate revocation of the Trump Organization’s business credentials, under a 1956 New York law meant to prevent fraud in the state. James’ AG predecessors have used the same law to strengthen cases made against scammers in the state, who targeted vulnerable victims on their “sucker lists,” and other states have since passed similar laws.
James’ predecessor G. Oliver Koppell, who served as New York’s AG in 1994, said, “We were pretty aggressive in how we used the power of the attorney general’s office to try and advance environmental rights, which became a very important objective in the AG’s office — as well as civil rights and we also did a lot of consumer protection. There were so many abuses of consumer rights and scams. We prosecuted dozens of scams.”
But James is utilizing this law in a new, creative way, by arguing to the court that Donald Trump violated consumer protections by purposely and knowingly manipulating and misrepresenting his property values in an effort to secure more favorable tax breaks and dupe banks for more advantageous loans and insurance policies.
“It’s something of a stretch,” Koppell added. “I think the law was primarily intended to go after consumer fraud. When I was there, we certainly focused primarily on consumer fraud…. people who got [swindled] in the mail or were induced to buy things they didn’t need. We really didn’t look at it as a business fraud law.”
However, Koppell noted that he certainly wasn’t opposed to James attempting to use this interpretation of this particular law in her case against the former president, in an effort to ensure a free and fair marketplace in the state of New York. Thus far, Judge Arthur F. Engoron has been inclined to agree with James and has allowed the NY AG to move forward with her case, utilizing this law, against the former president, mostly due to the deep extent and broad scope of Donald Trump’s incessant lies.
In one of his rulings in the case, Engoron wrote:
Executive Law § 63 (12) broadly empowers the Attorney General of the State of New York to seek to remedy the deleterious effects, in both the public’s perception and in reality, on truth and fairness in commercial marketplaces and the business community.”
The only argument that’s truly left on the table in Trump’s defense is the notion that lies such as this within large companies and organizations are so commonplace that they’ve become accepted in the industry as a whole. However, City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor Daniel L. Feldman weighed in and said he doesn’t see that argument being successful in the end.
“Now, I don’t buy that for a few reasons,” Feldman said. “The fact that everybody does it doesn’t make it legal. Trump did it to an extent I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. The egregious exaggerations went way beyond other people.”
Frankly, there’s just nowhere left for the big guy to turn. He will face Letitia James and be forced to answer for what he’s done — and there’s a serious chance that his business won’t survive it in the end.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
