OPINION:
Former President Donald Trump has a penchant for big talk. Whether it’s the extent of his wealth, the perfection of his phone calls or the square footage of his apartment, the former president never fails to express himself in superlatives. Anyone paying attention knows this.
And nobody is on higher alert for such overstatement than a bank appraiser entrusted with the mission of lending millions of dollars for use in a business deal. Apparently, however, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron hasn’t been paying attention and is indulging a partisan effort to brand the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination a criminal over a bit of asset valuation embroidery.
The former president isn’t the only one who engages in hyperbole. The “Justice” in Mr. Engoron’s title doesn’t mean he serves on the state’s highest court. Rather, New York applies the elevated term to the lowest district court judges. One form of embellishment is customary; the other is a felony.
Justice Engoron, a registered Democrat, issued a preliminary ruling last month essentially giving away his intention to find the former president guilty of financial fraud. Dig below the surface and the nefarious conduct he outlines seems unexceptional.
In securing financing, Trump Organization accountants handed lenders their estimates of the value of various properties. Naturally, assessments of this sort are biased, and lenders take this into account before extending credit.
That’s why, in this instance, the banks made the calculations needed to turn a tidy profit on each transaction with the Trump Organization. As the funds were repaid in full, the deals were a success for both sides.
“That is completely irrelevant,” Justice Engoron asserted in his ruling.
Despite the inherent subjectivity of any property valuation, the justice insisted the “crime” lies in Mr. Trump’s estimates for a number of assets, including his 11,000-square-foot Trump Tower apartment, a 200-acre real estate development, a Park Avenue building, and his home at Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. While there is substantial padding in Mr. Trump’s figures, the court engages in the same conduct in the opposite direction.
The biggest whopper of all is Justice Engoron’s assertion that Mr. Trump’s 17-acre beachfront resort in Palm Beach is worth $18 million to $28 million when, just up the road, a house one-eighth the square footage of Mar-a-Lago is listed for sale at just under $60 million. If one scales that listing price to match the size of the former president’s mansion, the Trump Organization’s valuation is spot-on.
Democrats know that they don’t actually have to come up with legitimate charges against their political rivals. Under what’s known as “lawfare,” they use the legal system itself to brand their opponent a criminal. Generally speaking, an indictment is sufficient to secure the desired media coverage, but Democratic judges in solidly Democratic jurisdictions seem eager to take the next step and deliver convictions.
“This is high-level election interference, and it’s happening for a single reason,” Mr. Trump said in a speech in Iowa on Saturday. “I’m the only candidate they don’t want to run against.”
The real fraud isn’t the conduct of Donald Trump, the businessman. It’s the pettifoggery of Justice Arthur F. Engoron, whose exaggerations undermine the public’s ability to make a free choice in 2024.
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