Trump trial follows a long line of fraud cases
Sounds of spring 2024 — the mating song of the Carolina wren, music through the windows of the Peabody Institute, cheers for an Orioles homer at Camden Yards and Donald Trump whining about his predicament in Manhattan District Court.
The former president calls the New York criminal case against him a “scam.”
He can say that all he likes. He can claim that he’s been unfairly targeted. But Trump faces the same kind of charges that thousands of other Americans have faced over the years — falsifying business records.
He’s not on trial for having an affair with a porn star.
He’s on trial for making false entries in the records of the Trump Organization to hide hush money paid to the porn star. Witnesses are important, but it’s essentially a documents case.
I have not conducted a poll, but I’m guessing most Americans don’t care that Trump once had an affair with the porn star known as Stormy Daniels.
As Trump stands trial, what we should care about are American ideals — equal justice under the law, and no man above it.
In that regard, the case is no “scam.” When you take away Trump’s stature as a former president and look past the porn star, you find a white-collar case like many of those that come through state and federal courts every day. At the trial table, Trump is reduced to just another guy in a suit accused of fraud in the nation’s financial capital.
An examination of court records by The Washington Post showed that, across New York state between 2014 and 2023, when Trump was indicted, prosecutors filed nearly 12,000 charges of falsifying business records. That’s the same crime for which Trump is now on trial.
Let me stop here and go back to what I stated four sentences ago:
These kinds of cases — coming in many forms, but generally described as white-collar fraud — do, in fact, come through the courts all the time. Most Americans would likely be surprised at how many there are.
I have a habit of reading news releases and indictments from the offices of the U.S. attorney for Maryland and the Maryland attorney general. I am particularly drawn to allegations against men and women who own or manage businesses and who try to defraud government agencies, another company, their own employer, clients or financial institutions. I find those cases fascinating and baffling.
I’m not naive to human nature and the never-ending attempts by certain people to keep more of their own money (by evading taxes) or steal someone else’s. But financial schemes that once seemed clever now seem ridiculously obvious and detectable and, in that regard, almost irrational. In the digital age, concealing any kind of fraud has become a much bigger challenge, especially for first-time miscreants.
Granted, I’m only basing this on cases in which fraud has actually been detected and its perpetrators caught. No doubt, there could be a lot more white-collar crime occurring every day, and not enough auditors and government agents to expose it.
But my point is, with regard to Trump: Those who think he’s been singled out because he’s running for president again, or that the case against him was extracted from thin air, need some context. There’s a lot more of this type of crime — violations of basic ethics and fiduciary trust perpetrated by men and women in suits and sitting at desks — than you might think.
A few examples from Maryland within the last year:
A defense contractor in Hagerstown got four years in federal prison for fabricating documents to get a contract to provide the Pentagon with teleconference equipment.
A 51-year-old guy who opened and closed sports bars in Baltimore and Abingdon in less than a year pleaded guilty to falsifying documents in a bankruptcy case. Federal investigators discovered that he was hiding money in banks in Panama while applying for a discharge from more than $6 million in debt. He got the discharge, but he also got indicted for bankruptcy fraud. He’s currently incarcerated in Florida.
The federal grand jury in Baltimore indicted five people for falsifying documents in an attempt to get a $35 million loan from the Small Business Administration for the purchase of hotels.
I could go on, so I will … A woman who handled real estate settlements in Maryland and Virginia pleaded guilty to transferring nearly $370,000 from her title company’s escrow account into her personal bank account. She’ll spend a year in prison, pay full restitution and likely never work in a position of trust again.
A 45-year-old financial adviser pleaded guilty in Baltimore to embezzling more than $1 million from a 75-year-old client’s retirement account, a crime recorded in dozens of bank transactions. U.S. Attorney Erek Barron called it “a heartless scheme that preyed on a vulnerable elderly victim.” The victim lost his home to foreclosure and died in 2020. The low-life embezzler is scheduled for sentencing this spring.
One more: A 64-yearold Baltimore man created a whole staff of fictional employees in order to qualify for $262,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program created by Congress for businesses harmed by the pandemic. He used some of the money to buy a $76,000 Mercedes-Benz and to lease a luxury apartment with a nice view of Camden Yards. He now has a nice view of the prison yard at the federal prison in Minersville, Pennsylvania.
Those who think Trump has been singled out because he’s running for president again, or that the case against him was extracted from thin air, need some context.