October 3 — Former President Donald Trump was in New York yesterday to face fraud charges filed by the New York Attorney General Letitia James in a civil suit.
Trump said, “The Attorney General of this state is a disgrace. Leticia James, she’s a disgrace to our country and to the state of New York. She should focus on all of the violent crime and the murders going on in New York, not on somebody that paid back the banks in full without a default and in many cases paid them back early.
Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM noted, “What’s happening to Donald Trump in New York, I understand that they’re trying to devalue his property or they’re putting up some values, $18 million for Mar a Lago. Tack on another zero and you double it or triple it, then maybe you have something to talk about here.”
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “Just as an aside, this judge, the Journal, did a big profile on him the other day, very eccentric character. He’s in the twilight of his judicial career. Apparently he routinely cites pop culture and music in his rulings and is just known as just a very sort of funny, eccentric guy.”
The trial was supposed to be by jury, but apparently Trump’s legal team missed a deadline to make that request. So it’s now a bench trial.
Barkdoll said, “It’s only this judge that’s making all of the decisions and this is a civil trial. This is not criminal. So when Trump says no crimes were committed, well, this is not a criminal trial. The Attorney General is looking for money damages. I think what you heard Trump say there is essentially what his defense is going to be that all of the banks were paid back in full. Some were paid back early. He’s going to argue even if fraud occurred, even if someone was cooking the books, there was no victim here because the banks were all paid back. Now the Attorney General is going to say that doesn’t matter, because these were ill gotten gains if he used fraud to get these loans and even though he paid him back he then made all this money off of ill gotten loans. That’s money that the state of New York, the public should be able to recover. Yesterday was actually pretty favorable for Trump. They were able to present this accountant that went back many years that had some very favorable testimony for how the Trump organization operated, but we’re in the very early innings of what will be a nine inning game here and this will go on for quite some time.”
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM pointed out, “It’s obvious abuse of the process, to tie Trump up in court and to make him look like an evil bad guy with all these charges against him. It is such an abuse of power. There is such obvious political bias among the DAs, the judges, so many people involved here and they don’t care. They don’t care that it’s so blatant. Do we realize all these anti-establishment figures like Trump, like even Russell Brand, now maybe he was guilty of stuff in the past, but it’s all people who are anti-establishment, Tucker Carlson, Barstool Sports Guy, Joe Rogan. We see this combing through their past to find legal things to get them on. We see it happening on only one side, people who defy this progressive left power structure that we have now. Is anybody concerned about that? Because I think it’s really damaging.”
Interestingly, Trump does not have to be in court.
Barkdoll said, “He has voluntarily chosen to sit in on the trial and you look at some of the reporting yesterday, some reporting is he’s enjoying this. We know that it’s benefited him politically, in a big way. Every time there’s been a criminal indictment his poll numbers go up, his fundraising goes through the roof. There’s some thought and this is the first of the civil trials — there’s criminal trials that will be next year — might he still be able to use this to raise his profile even more? The reporting is he intends to sit in there every day and watch this unfold. But yet, I do think for the public that they’ve just become numb to this. We’ve got so many different trials, so many different charges. His base supporters, they don’t care about any of this. They’re seeing it entirely as a setup to keep him away from the presidency again. They think this is all a rigged system and the poll numbers are bearing that out. You know, Trump himself said, give me a few more of these indictments. I need one or two more and that’ll lock me into the White House. So it’s just a very strange dynamic that’s playing itself out right now across the country with these cases.”
