Former ethics czar trashes lawyer's claim that Trump fraud ruling is 'illegitimate'
In a 16-page paper, former Ethics Czar, impeachment lawyer and longtime legal analyst Norm Eisen destroyed arguments that Judge Arthur Engoron's verdict and fine for Donald Trump and his company is "illegitimate."
On Friday, Trump was ordered to pay $354.9 million for a decades-long scheme that involved artificially inflating the size and value of properties and other assets, garnering him favorable treatment at banks.
Jonathan Turley, a lawyer who spoke out against impeaching Trump, has been among those legal analysts to defend the ex-president on many legal matters publicly. Writing in the New York Post, Turley spun Trump's talking points that Democrats weaponized the justice system to "punish" him.
Trump has long claimed that the fraud was "victimless."
"But the defense team called multiple witnesses from Deutsche Bank, whose testimony focused on confirming the obvious: that the bank sought to do business with Trump to make money, that it, in fact, profited off the relationship with Trump, and that there was no default of the loans," explains Eisen and co-author Andrew Warren in the paper.
However, he wrote, "victim loss is not required to establish intent to defraud."
In fact, there was a loss by the bank, the paper explains.
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"Challenging the extent of the financial loss is different than establishing there was no loss, and the record clearly established that the banks lost money by lending at lower interest rates than they otherwise might have," it says.
Turley had claimed that the Trump Organization didn't harm anybody, and thus the prosecution was without merit.
"Even the New York Times agreed that it could not find a single case in history where this statute was used against an individual or a company that did not commit a criminal offense, go bankrupt, or leave financial victims," claimed Turley. "Engoron then combined that unprecedented application with an equally extraordinary penalty, which is greater than the gross national product of some countries."
Eisen and Warren write, "Now the salient questions are whether or not the state made its case, and if so, will it survive on appeal. While the defense certainly scored points (more than popularly appreciated), we think the court will rule for the state, and the record is sufficient to withstand appeal — notwithstanding some defense successes along the way."
They continued: "Despite some ups and downs, we believe the OAG has proven the three primary causes of action against Trump: falsification of business records in the second degree (cause of action 2), issuing false financial statements 18 (cause of action 4), and insurance fraud 19 (cause of action 6). The three remaining causes of action charge conspiracy to commit each of these offenses, which require additional proof, as discussed below. We start out of order with the fourth cause of action, as the accuracy of the annual SFCs is the heart of the entire case."
Ultimately, the decision is likely to go to the appeals court, Eisen conceded.
Posting on social media, Eisen responded directly to Turley: "To my friend (& he is!) @JonathanTurley & everyone else saying Judge Engoron's reasoning is illegitimate NO, NO, NO 1000x NO @AndrewWarrenFL & I wrote an indep. analysis of the evidence & law (a top 10 SSRN paper in our category)"
