Letitia James' new filing could blow up Trump's legal funding 'shell game': expert
August 30, 2023
The advancing civil suit against former President Donald Trump's family by New York Attorney General Letitia James could be as serious a problem for the former president as the criminal cases against him, argued Trump University investigator Tristan Snell on MSNBC's "The ReidOut" Wednesday — in part, because it could actually strip Trump of the ability to finance his legal cases.
James is currently seeking summary judgment in the case, asking for a ruling that Trump fraudulently misstated his assets and seeking an order barring him from doing business in New York, without a trial.
"[Trump] is ... facing, potentially, some serious financial pain," said anchor Joy Reid.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"Yeah," said Snell. "It's the financial pain, Joy, but it's also then the fact that the AG's office as part of the law they will be asserting against Trump here includes the ability to seek the cancellation of corporate charters for these entities that were overvaluing the worth of these properties. So, in New York, that would mean, say, 40 Wall Street LLC getting its corporate charter cancelled, which then throws everything into doubt about Trump's ability to charge rent to those tenants, and the rent is the money that comes in, the lifeblood of his sort of empire of debt, if he can service all of these debts because he's getting this rent in the door from these properties. If he's not allowed to collect rent on his New York properties, it throws a whole bunch of things into major limbo."
"I think the one thing to look out for that we haven't been talking about that much yet is the possibility that he could lose the ability to do business in the state of New York because of his persistent fraud and illegality," said Snell. "Not just in this matter alone where it's years and years of overstatements allegedly, but also we have the Trump University matter, the Trump Foundation matter, and then the finding of tax fraud by a criminal jury in Manhattan that happened last year is more than enough to establish a pattern of persistent fraud and illegality, for which New York State courts will order the extraordinary relief of cancellation of corporate charters."
"Can they take some of these properties?" asked Reid. "Can the state of New York seize properties from him?"
"We don't know exactly how this is going to play out in practice," said Snell. "This is something that I'm actually going to be looking into as we head toward trial in this matter in the next month or so. It's going to be interesting to see what would happen. Will they take them? Will they put them into a receivership, potentially, whereby the property would basically be held in a trust? Some of the creditors might be able to get some money. They would probably be taking significant haircuts. But they wouldn't allow Trump to take money from his New York properties and use it, say, on his legal fees. That wouldn't be permitted. He wouldn't be able to rob Peter to pay Paul. It could have massive, massive financial impact for Trump and completely ruin the shell game that he's been running all these years."
Watch the video below or at the link.
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