Trump organization guilty of tax fraud

[SteveWhite]

Jury finds Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud scheme

Jury finds Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud on all counts

“This whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not true,” assistant district attorney Josh Steinglass said during his closing statement.

The conviction carries fines of up to $1.7 million. But collateral consequences of a conviction may be more significant to Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House. Banks could call in loans and business partners could cancel contracts if their internal policies prevent them from doing business with felons.

The trial also revealed potentially embarrassing details about Trump, including that he reported nearly $1 billion in operating losses over a two-year period in 2009 and 2010, as well as losses each year for the decade between 2009 and 2018 – some of the same years Trump was touting his business acumen on reality television and as he was campaigning for president.

[SteveWhite]

\textcolor{red}{\text{Trump should have been more aware of what was going on at his companies}}

[SteveWhite]

\textcolor{red}{\text{Thread in Political since trial was about politics not fraud}}

[YankeeTripper]

I’m not seeing this on Fox News yet, are you sure it’s true?

[SteveWhite]

If I saw in on Fox News, would I be sure it’s true?

[YankeeTripper]

Nevermind. Fox caught up and buried it at the bottom of the business section.

[dr_t_non-fan]

@YankeeTripper

Nevermind. Fox caught up and buried it at the bottom of the business section

Thought Murdock was all-in on the Dump Trump bandwagon. Maybe the ratings dropped and he had to backstep? Maybe they couldn’t book enough fearmongers?

[Ranger]

Does this stop the bickering within the GOP and clear the path for DeSantis to become the front-runner?

[SteveWhite]

[ArthurItas]

Nah, increases the Trump GOP appeal as it caters to the narrative that the deep state is persecuting the one man that can save the country.

[soyleche]

Trump wasn’t wrong about him being able to shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose supporters. That’s how cults work.

[SteveWhite]

From NY Daily News:

[twig93]

Dumb question: how can a business be guilty?

I thought that people were guilty, not businesses.

I can understand how a business could be financially liable. But guilty?

[YankeeTripper]

I think the Supreme Court decided corporations are people too a while back.

[twig93]

So is anyone going to jail?

[SteveWhite]

the CFO is, for only 5 months, per his plea agreement. No one directly as a result of this trial

[dr_t_non-fan]

@YankeeTripper

I think the Supreme Court decided corporations are people too a while back.

When one corporation lusts after another, it grabs the other by the pussy…

[EimonGnome]

Think of stuff like money laundering.

[SteveWhite]

@twig93

So is anyone going to jail?

@SteveWhite

the CFO is, for only 5 months, per his plea agreement. No one directly as a result of this trial

Allen Weisselberg could get more time since the Trump Org guilty verdict...

All of them [5 former prosecutors with whom the article’s publisher spoke] said that by finding Weisselberg guilty, the jury showed it did not believe the ex-CFO when he repeatedly denied on the witness stand that in running a 13-year tax-dodge scheme for himself and fellow executives he also intended to benefit Trump’s company. Intent to benefit the company is vital for a conviction under New York’s corporate-liability law.

This no-confidence vote from the jury, especially when coupled with the prosecution’s open-court distrust of Weisselberg, their own star witness, would allow the trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, to revoke the plea deal and hike the sentence, the ex-prosecutors said.

“I would argue that he didn’t tell the truth and the deal is off the table,” said Diana Florence, who handled complex enterprise-corruption cases as chief of the construction-fraud task force during her 25 years as a Manhattan prosecutor.

“Weisselberg says over and over, ‘I, together with the Trump Organization,’” Florence, now in private practice, noted of his guilty plea. “Then he gets on the stand and says, ‘It was just me.’”

“He kept to his story that it was all about me and Trump didn’t know anything,” said Adam Kaufmann, a former investigations chief at the office.

“It was a nice try,” added Kaufmann, now a partner at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, PLLC. “But they didn’t believe him.”