Trump's greatest talent is leading to the death of his empire: biographer

According to the author of "The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire," that very empire is on the verge of collapse now that New York Attorney General Letitia James is using the full force of her office to pursue Donald Trump and his children for real estate fraud.

In a column for Politico, Gwenda Blair asserted that, if the former president has one "superpower," it is his ability to lie and exaggerate and convince people to believe him -- which is at the root of James' case against the Trump family.

As she wrote for Politico, Trump's "...flair for tall tales would be his MO for more than four decades and arguably catapulted him to the presidency. But now, his main tactic has left him open to a civil suit that threatens to unravel his empire."

After detailing the "gimmicks" and bravado that allowed Trump to build on the family name in New York, Blair suggested the mistake Trump made was thinking the same modus operandi would play in Washington DC -- but instead, it led to increased "scrutiny" back in New York.

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"The falsehoods that had worked to sell condos and attract bank loans worked less well in Washington," she wrote. "Redrawing a weather map with a black Sharpie, pushing unproven remedies on victims of Covid and pressuring Ukrainian president Zelenskyy to investigate Biden’s son in exchange for weapons that had already been appropriated created problems rather than solutions. A vast federal bureaucracy had replaced the small, intensely loyal staff that Trump had controlled as a real-estate developer, and the same mainstream media that had enabled his rise to super-stardom was subjecting him to relentless scrutiny."

Blair then added that Trump's lies about the value of his properties were combined by the AG's office with "evidence — lots of it."

"Citing more than 65 witnesses, millions of documents and a decade’s worth of inaccurate annual financial statements containing more than 200 grossly misleading evaluations, Attorney General James filed a civil suit in state court and sent a criminal referral to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and a tax fraud referral to the IRS," she explained.

As a coda, she recalled Trump's admiration for attorney Roy Cohn's "...ability to avoid prison despite having been indicted for tax fraud."

"No doubt Donald Trump is hoping that he will have the same fate, but he should be careful what he wishes for. James filed suit in civil court, which cannot sentence a defendant to jail, but if she prevails, she will demand repayment of the $250 million he allegedly pocketed through fraud and that he and his children be permanently banned from doing business in New York," she wrote.

"The Trump Organization would be devastated, but in an O. Henry twist, Trump and his children would truly be sharing what might be seen as the equivalent of Cohn’s ultimate fate, being disbarred two months before he died," she concluded.

You can read her entire columns here.