'I Don't Think This Case Is about Trump Anymore': Kevin O'Leary on New York's $355 Million Judgment
Politicized legal attacks are extremely dangerous. Americans of good faith should reject these legal attacks on the former president regardless of how they feel about him.
I do my best to steer clear of politics, especially presidential politics.
Ideas are much more interesting, and it seems to me that Americans are so consumed with their preferred candidate (or perhaps consumed over the one they hate) that they’ve forgotten the wisdom of Thomas Huxley.
“It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance,” he noted.
All of this gets lost in political debates, especially today. Politics is more toxic than I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime, and the stakes are higher. Politicians are now going to prison over these political games. And lives are being destroyed.
Which brings me to President Trump. I have no intention of voting for Trump for reasons I won’t go into here, but one needn’t be a supporter of the longtime New York real estate mogul to see there is something deeply unjust happening in New York, which recently slapped a $355 million judgment against him for allegedly valuing his property too high while doing business with financial institutions. (The financial institution, Deutsche Bank, said they were not defrauded during the transaction and planned to continue doing business with Trump.)
In a recent CNN appearance, “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O'Leary delivered a monologue I think people need to hear.
"Forfeiture. Seizing of assets. Is that in our nomenclature in America? Is that what we tell people that want to bring their money here and protect property rights. Forget about Trump, nothing to do with Trump. Do you think this is good for business in New York. You think this is good for business in America? To take a law that we used to protect people from buying refrigerators at an overpriced value decades ago and apply it against an individual and then talk about seizing assets like he was in Venezuela, or in Cuba?”
Again, this isn’t about whether you like Trump or not. It’s about the kind of country we’re going to live in.
The legal system is being weaponized against a former president. It’s really that simple.
Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on taking down Trump, whom she regarded as “an illegitimate president.” The idea of taking down Trump was “fueling her soul,” she bluntly stated in one of her many speeches against the longtime business tycoon.
“Oh, we’re going to definitely sue him,” she said in another. “We’re going to be a real pain the ass.”
You don’t have to like Trump or want him to be president to see what a mockery this is to justice and the political system. James didn’t even know or care what statue she’d find to prosecute. Apparently, as O'Leary notes, she found an old consumer protection law to go after Trump. It reminds me of the old line attributed to Stalin henchman Lavrentiy Beria
“Show me the man and I'll show you the crime,” Beria infamously boasted.
This is a classic example of lawfare, which is described as “legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual's usage of their legal rights.”
O'Leary is right that these political attacks could have dire economic consequences. Property rights are a pillar of civilization and the found of all human rights. The world is indeed watching, and many may decide to not bring their capital to New York if it’s acting like a banana republic.
But they could also have a dire impact on the political and justice systems in the US. The left is playing with fire here.
Americans of good faith should reject these legal attacks on the former president regardless of how they feel about him.
Good. Property Rights are the basis of it all. When they are lost, all else will fall. This is really bad, and as you say, Trump is irrelevant here.
It’s a little hard to figure out what the crime is here. My understanding of fraud was you had to have knowingly made a material misstatement that was relied on by another party to their detriment. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any damages.So we have an elected official who ran on a get Trump platform who has Trump prosecuted on what sounds like a victimless crime. That by itself raises the specter of systemic prejudice against a defendant which I should think would be a basis for appeal by itself.As for the damages, they are so disproportionate to the offense, they are ludicrous.To analogize , it’s like giving the death penalty to someone for jaywalking.And this is being done in the context of a presidential election.You don’t have to like Trump to be very disturbed by this . This is “ political justice “ in the most obvious form. Apparently the game plan - and I think there is one even if it’s rough and unspoken- is to defenestrate Trump, get Biden reelected and the let him resign so KH can become president. Technically not a coup but real close.It such a shame we got stuck with Trump and Biden but we are.