The Gagged Donald Trump Appearing Before One of the Judges Who Gagged Him Today I had the privilege of appearing on AM560 Chicago’s Morning Answer with hosts Amy Jacobson and Dan Proft. We covered a number of topics ranging from Donald Trump’s judicial gag orders to the death of George Floyd.
You can hear most of the interview by clicking on this link.
Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the audio feed abruptly ends while we were talking about the Floyd case.
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James Feldman
Judge Engoron is essentially a partisan fraud. The entire NY case is based upon the false premise that Trump overstated the valuations of his properties on his personal financial statements.
But the Prosecution, Engoron, and the Media are lying about those valuations. Trump’s personal financial statements are governed by Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 274 of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). And ASC 274 required that all assets shown on Trump’s balance sheets be valued at “Estimated Current Value”–which means: “For an asset, the amount at which the item COULD be exchanged between a buyer and seller, each of whom is well informed and willing, and neither of whom is compelled to buy or sell.” [Emphasis added.]
That means that to prove that Trump’s financial statements were false and overstated, the Prosecution and the Court must PROVE that Trump’s properties COULD NOT be sold at the values his balance sheet lists them as. But they HAVEN’T DONE THAT AND THEY CAN’T do that!
The Prosecution and the Court are using such bogus values as “assessed value”, which is used for tax purposes, not the standards of ASC 274. Fair Market Value (FMV) of real estate is commonly a large multiple of the assessed value. And ASC 274’s “Estimated Current Value” standard is even more flexible than the FMV standard.
For example, Engoron falsely states the following in his court ruling on the case:
“From 2011-2021, the Palm Beach Country Assessor appraised the market value of Mar-a-Lago at between $18 million and $27.6 million.” This statement is false because the Palm Beach County Assessor doesn’t do “appraisals” of properties and didn’t determine “the market value of Mar-a-Lago.” Rather, the Country Assessor determined the “assessed value,” a valuation that is always a FRACTION of the market value.
Then, based on Engoron’s bogus assumptions, he falsely referred to Trump’s valuation of his Mar-a-Lago estate at between $426,529,614 million and $612,100,496 as “an overvaluation of at least 2,300%, compared to the assessor’s appraisal [sic; should be assessment since assessors don’t do appraisals].
Notably, Engoron makes no mention of the REAL standard of value specified by the governing accounting principles. And the value to be reported on Trump’s financial statements is the value that Mar-a-Lago COULD be sold for. There has to be at least a scintilla of evidence proving that Mar-a-Lago COULD NOT be sold for between $426 million and $612 million for the State of New York to prevail if the law was genuinely applied, and Engoron hasn’t offered even a scintilla of evidence, nor could he even if he wanted to.
Engoron and the Prosecution are simply making stuff up and the entire case is a fraud.
George Parry
Thank you, James, for your very informative comment. Sadly Judge Engoron appears to be a man on a mission for whom the truth is irrelevant.
James Feldman
Thanks, George. Engoron is not only wrong factually, but he’s wrong about the law too. Consider the following statement in his ruling where Engoron thinks he’s being clever:
“As detailed infra, the documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuation that defendants used in business, satisfying OAG’s burden to establish liability as a matter of law against defendants. Defendants’ [sic] respond that: the documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as “objective” value; and that, essentially, the Court should not believe its own eyes. [FN 9.]”
FN 9: “As Chico Marx, playing Chicolini, says to Margaret Dumont, playing Mrs. Gloria Teasdale, in “Duck Soup,”” “well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?””
I’ve been involved in the valuations of assets for scores of years in litigation contexts and it is absolutely settled law that valuations of assets are subjective opinions, not objective facts. For example, in Fait v. Regions Financial Corp. (May 10, 2010), the court ruled the following:
“The fair value of those assets, the majority of which consisted of the value of AmSouth’s loan portfolio, however, was not a matter of objective fact. Those assets were not traded on the New York Stock Exchange or some other efficient market where the fair market value typically is the price at which a share or other asset is trading at any given moment. Nor has plaintiff pointed to any other objective standard of value. Rather, the value of such assets is a matter of judgment and opinion.
“Fraternity Fund Ltd. v. Beacon Hill Asset Mgmt., LLC, 479 F. Supp. 2d 349, 361-63 (S.D.N.Y. 2007) (valuation of collateralized mortgage obligations not traded on regular exchange “considerably more a statement of opinion than a report of an objectively determinable fact”). See Tsereteli v. Residential Asset Securitization Trust 2006-A8, No. 08 Civ. 10637 (LAK), ___ F. Supp. 2d ___, 2010 WL 816623, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 11, 2010) (appraisal or judgment as to real estate or loan value is “a subjective opinion based on the particular methods and assumptions the appraiser uses”); In re Salomon Analyst Level 3 Litig., 373 F. Supp. 2d 248, 251-52 (S.D.N.Y. 2005) (Lynch, J.) (“[V]aluation models depend so heavily on the discretionary choices of the modeler . . . that the resulting models and their predictions can only fairly be characterized as subjective opinions.”).”
Similarly, the assets in question in the New York State case aren’t traded on a public exchange either and the valuations are matters of subjective opinion, not objective fact.
George Parry
Thank you again for your excellent analysis and special thanks for the case citations.
Matthew Meyer
Hey George–Something is wrong with the Floyd link or the NSA wiped it out
George Parry
Matt, the audio feed was cut before the end of the interview. There was another minute of discussion about how the Chauvin case was tried before a terrorized Hennepin County jury.
James Feldman
New information is becoming public about the George Floyd case proving what most of us who have been paying attention knew all along. The case against Derek Chauvin was a sham and a fraud and made a mockery of our judicial system. Here’s the latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1VL80tu-4Y.
And if that were not bad enough, the SCOTUS too has made a mockery of justice by refusing to hear Derek Chauvin’s appeal. But the betrayal of the law by the SCOTUS was also foreseeable. Most people didn’t pay attention to what Amy Coney Barrett said during her confirmation hearing.
But she exposed herself as a fraud even then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnbDx5TLeSE
Barrett proved here that she’s not only a lousy judge, but that she’s a liar. An honest judge with integrity would decline to discuss an ongoing case or his/her response to a video involving the case. But a fraud like Barrett welcomed the opportunity to discuss–and lie about–the case. Lie #1: The police were racist. Truth: Zero evidence of racism. Just the opposite. Lie #2: Police used brutality. Truth: The Police never used any tactics remotely demonstrating brutality. The Police followed the rules to the letter and treated Floyd with far more respect than he deserved. Lie #3: Office Chauvin pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck leading to his death. Truth: Lightly holding the knee against Floyd’s shoulder and neck area was standard procedure according to the Minneapolis Police Manual. At no time did Chauvin apply direct pressure to Floyd’s neck. Barrett never even saw the complete set of videos available. She only saw the media’s lies about the case. Trump was foolish to nominate her and he should have known that anyone recommended to him by Deep State member Mitch McConnell, who has been in bed with China for decades, wasn’t going to serve justice.
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