Trump, the ‘law-and-order’ candidate, is an adjudicated fraudster
The week-that-was will likely weigh heavily on the 45th president for the months and years to come. On Friday, Arthur Engoron, a New York judge, found Donald Trump and his businesses liable for conspiracy and ordered them to pay $355m. On top of that, the court banned Trump and his two adult sons from serving at the helm of any New York company for three years, while imposing a $4m penalty on both of the boys.
In a 92-page decision, Engoron also lacerated Trump’s pretensions of credibility. He repeatedly tagged Trump for his allergy to the truth.
“Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial,” the decision reads. “His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”
He added that the court had “found preliminarily that defendants had a propensity to engage in persistent fraud by submitting false and misleading Statements of Financial Condition … on behalf of Donald Trump”.
One footnote in the legal judgment went like this: “Peterson-Withorn, Chase. ‘Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size of His Penthouse.’ Forbes, May 3, 2017.”
For the record, Trump invoked his fifth amendment right against selfincrimination more than 400 times at deposition. “Anyone in my position not taking the fifth amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool,” he said. It is all of a piece.
Trump is on a roll, of sorts. One day earlier, Juan Merchan, a second Manhattan judge, set a 25 March start date for Trump’s trial on state-law felony charges. “Stop interrupting me,” the judge scolded the defendant’s legal team.
Merchan also denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the underlying 34count indictment. According to Manhattan prosecutors, Trump purportedly directed hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, and Karen McDougal, an adult model.
But Trump’s streak doesn’t end there. Last week, a US court of appeals rejected his demand for absolute immunity. US presidents are not kings, the court reminded us.
“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power,” the unsigned but unanimous opinion read.
“We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”
Then again, the US supreme court may put the case on ice. We may know more next week.
Appeals are expensive. Trump will also need to bond or otherwise secure the mammoth-sized judgment. Interest accrues too. Regardless, others must pay for his sins.
The forced departure of Ronna McDaniel from the helm of the Republican National Committee signals that Trump intends to make the RNC a personal piggy bank. After essentially selffinancing his primary run in 2016, he turned up his palms to face off against Hillary Clinton. According to campaign finance filings, his political committees have shelled out more than $50m in legal fees.
The ex-reality show host has not always been awash in cash. “My net worth fluctuates,” Trump once swore. “It goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”
His casinos have gone bust, his companies bankrupted a half-dozen times. Restructurings pock his borrowings. Trump University is no more.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, first uncovered by the Guardian in 2016, placed his liquidity at north of $250m as of mid-2011, his wealth at $4.2bn. This past October, Forbes pegged his worth at $2.6bn. He did not make its iconic 400 richest list. “He’s nowhere near as rich as he boasts, nor as poor as some critics claim.”
The value of his assets appears to have shrunk even as his liquidity has grown. “I have over 400 – fairly substantially over $400m in cash,” he recently testified. These days, he’s staring at judgments hovering near $450m.
The latest blows come on the heels of January’s $83.3m verdict in E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial. Heading toward November, the “lawand-order” candidate is an adjudicated predator. Lewis Kaplan, the presiding judge in the Carroll cases, stressed that Trump had sexually assaulted her.
Guilty verdicts loom as possibilities in both the hush money and election interference cases. Manhattan juries don’t love him, judging by the size of the recent Carroll verdict. DC juries previously convicted Trump’s cronies Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro and Roger Stone. January 6 defendants have also fared poorly.
Trump later pardoned Bannon and Stone. He has vowed to do the same for those who stormed the Capitol in his name.
Americans aren’t enamored with a convicted felon sitting in the Oval Office. Then again, they haven’t cottoned to the incumbent. By itself, Friday’s ruling will sway few. On the other hand, wavering voters may get off the fence if a criminal conviction or two follow.
Days ago, Trump raged against Letitia James and Engoron. He blasted the attorney general as “corrupt”, the judge as “biased”, the case as “rigged”.
It’s been nearly a decade since he hosted The Apprentice. The former reality show host sounds scared. Welcome to the theatre of the real.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
child-rearing around the demands of work. “Dads always think their jobs are the most important and the company can never run without them,” she says.
For those who take leave together, the discrepancies can be glaring, says Instagram parenting influencer Zach Watson, 33, who took parental leave for four months alongside his wife. Witnessing his wife’s breastfeeding challenges meant that he would sometimes sleep on the carpet in front of the rocking chair when she was feeding their daughter to keep her company. Other times he just doomscrolled his phone because there was not much he could do while rocking the baby. “I was more leaned in and hyperaware of how much I was screwing up,” says Watson, a former teacher who lives in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
Julian Watkins, an attorney in Cairo, Illinois, says the two weeks of paternity leave he took after his wife made the different experiences more evident. (He also took another two weeks alongside his wife.) During his solo leave, Watkins was able to get his mom to visit and take on babysitting responsibilities, allowing him to catch up on work. On the other hand, his wife spent most of the first eight weeks dealing with their newborn on her own. “I felt bad complaining about how hard it was,” he says. •••
Since paternity leave in the US has yet to feel like the default, mothers – myself included – are hesitant to express anything but appreciation. Of course, I was thrilled that my husband had pieced together two months of paternity leave when our oldest was born. But when I watched him build empires while playing hours of Civilization
on his work-issued laptop, the thankfulness had disappeared.
As my daughter slept near our dining table, he reminded me that babies slept an average of 18 hours per day (it’s roughly between 14 and 17 hours) and he had time for it all. I hardly noticed the cooking or the other caretaking responsibilities he slipped into. And I felt that surely there was more that he could do, like wipe down the kitchen counters or check her diaper an extra time. After all, he wasn’t struggling like me to figure out what to do with a postpartum body, unstable hormones and the challenges of breastfeeding.
In retrospect, I wished my own maternity leave could have afforded me an opportunity to wade into the role of mom. It would mean more walks exploring the city or figuring out how to distract her during tummy time.
But even if it seems more carefree, fathers deserve to have this time which leads to more engaged parents in the long run. The better route may be to acknowledge the differences and bridge the gap between a stressful hectic early maternity leave and what, in comparison, can seem like a less stressful paternity leave, says Petts, the professor.
“This idea that leave is vacation time or leave is leisure time is a myth – most fathers don’t see it that way,” he says.
Looking back, the two months off my husband took allowed him to start his role as our in-home chef (he’s now plucking our veggies from our hydroponic garden). It also impelled him to leave the consulting job that required him to be away from our child each week. Those two months cemented a bond that’s enduring and is reflected in our shared responsibilities at home.
I’ve also realized that in the decade since, there were few times when playing video games was possible. I’m glad he recognized it and seized the moment. I wish I would have done the same.
Becoming a father is a transformative experience and we see consistent evidence that taking leave leads men to act differently
Richard Petts