New York's fraud suit against Trump

 Remember the basic rule for any potential trial with Donald Trump as the defendant.  You cannot block every Republican from the jury.  So, can you bring a complaint, civil or criminal, that will convince even Republicans to side against Donald Trump?  At best, you can weed out January 6-ers and QAnon-ers from the jury pool.  That's it.  You cannot block Republicans from the jury, and the party is still basically a Trump cult.  So if you find yourself saying, "surely this will convince them that Donald Trump is crooked and wrong," well a) stop calling me Shirley, b) stop making me make that reference, and c) when has that ever been right?

I have claimed that the stolen documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago actually create real legal danger for the first time in the history of Trump's life, and the reason is that it is so cut-and-dried.  Did he take the papers?  Yes.  Did he refuse to hand them back, and lie about it?  Yup.  Is there anything even remotely resembling a legal loophole?  Nope.  Trump and his flunkies are throwing everything out there to create a smokescreen of bullshit (a shitscreen?), but neither Trump nor anyone else is even trying to offer a defense for taking the documents, retaining the documents, nor lying to the Feds about having handed them back.  Why not?  There is no defense.  This is cut-and-dried.  One can imagine the prosecutor's closing arguments, jury instructions and all that.  One struggles to imagine what a defense attorney would say, given that Trump's attorneys are already being put in such a corner, refusing to repeat Trump's obvious lies about having declassified the documents... because they'd face consequences for knowingly lying to the court, and we all know it's a lie, and we know that they know.  Is it a 100% conviction?  No, but chances are greater than zero, which makes it different from every other accusation Trump has ever faced in the history of his life.

But what about the fraud charges?  Trump lies.  Trump lies a lot.  Trump lies about everything.  Trump is, as I say, the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie.  He doesn't just lie casually.  He lies for money, about money.  He undervalues his property for tax purposes, and overvalues it when trying to secure loans, despite the fact that anyone who loans him money is an idiot who deserves not to be repaid.  And won't be, because he's a liar.  Regardless, if you wildly inflate the value of your assets for loans, while undervaluing them for tax purposes, that's fraud.  It's illegal.  Surprise, surprise, Trump does that.  A lot.  Hence, the civil suit in the State of New York.

What are his chances of losing?  Very low.  Why?  The jury pool.  If it goes to trial, there will be Republicans on the jury.  Is this going to be so cut-and-dried that even the most devoted Trump-cultist will throw the book.  S.  Both sets of books at him?  No.  There are two primary differences.  First, accountants are intermediaries, and Trump never writes down instructions, while prohibiting notes during meetings.  Why?  So that he can deny accountability.  Blame the accountants.  Second, property doesn't have a fixed value until it sells.  That's how you know the price.  Until that point, it is arguable.  As I look around... the currently-inked fountain pen on my desk cost me about $100 a few years ago.  If I tried to sell it today, would I get $100?  No, but I could call it $100.  Once I put it up for an eBay auction, I find the value, and maybe I get $60, but I can call it $100.  What if the precise model is no longer available?  So I claim $120?  How high can I go?  I mean, I'm bullshitting, but until I put it up for sale, who calls bullshit?

Well, my accountants.  But without records of my accountants telling me that I'm lying, you can't nail me.  And there's the basic problem.  You have an interaction between the indeterminacy of value and the insulation of Trump from the process of determination.

Is he a lying, cheating fraud?  Yes.  But will his line of shit work on a Trumpist juror?  Yes.

In order to nail Trump, there needs to be zero room for argument.  As for example, see this document here?  It is a national security document.  It doesn't even matter if you buy his line of bullshit that he declassified it.  It is national security.  It is not his, according to the law.  Why is it in Mar-a-Lago?  Because he took it.  See this chain of back-and-forth showing that he claimed to return all documents that weren't his?  Well, he didn't.  This is all pure fact.  That's what you need.  It's still not a sure thing, but remember the basic rule:  the GOP is a Trump cult, and you cannot block cultists from the jury.  There are too many of them.

So will the fraud suit stick?  Nope.