being politically persecuted. While overlooking that is exactly what they did to Hillary with a gigantic difference: Hillary wasn't convicted of anything but it's very likely some of this apparent criminal behavior is going to stick to Trump and they know it.
If you followed the Manafort case or Cohen's, financial crimes like bank fraud or tax evasion are much more difficult to bicker about than "collusion" or "obstruction" where lawyers like Giuliani can play word games with the law. Either the financial transactions are there to establish a crime or they are not.
All my comments below are premised with the notion that Cohen is not lying under oath because he would suffer severe circumstances if he did. And that the statements he provided are what he says they are and got used in the way he said they did.
I saw financial statements of Trump's today, provided by Cohen, where one set said Trump was worth about $5 billion in June 2012 and another set said he was worth $9.1 billion just 9 months later.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5795740-Attachments.html
(roughly page 61 and page 81 I think)
If you look a little closer at them, accounts payable if $4,400,000 for June 2012 and March 2013. I cannot tell you how unusual it is to have the same number nine months later for accounts payable nine months later. The statements round to the nearest $10,000 but still, it's very unique.
But it keeps going .. "Loans related to clubs .." is $148,360,000 for both June 2012 and March 2013 but the description changes to "Club Facilities" (under Loans). "Loans related to Trump Park Avenue" is unchanged at $22,190,000 except for the description "Residential Properties (New York City)" (under Loans). So did he just pay financing charges because loans normally get paid down (and you like to show the banks you are doing that when applying for more dough to be loaned to you)?
Likewise, you see a similar thing comparing the assets between the two periods. "Partnerships and Joint Ventures for Avenue of the Americas, New York and California St, San Francisco" remains at $823,300,000 for both periods. "Property under development" matches "Mansion at Seven Springs, Bedford, NY" $291,000,000. "Club Facilities ..." remains at $1,570,300,000 on both statements.
etc Incredibly, all those properties never appreciated or depreciated in value over those nine months in two of the most expensive real estate markets in the world?
So let me put it this way, in my opinion, the chances of those numbers for loans, appraisal value and payables in accounting remaining the same for nine months are probably less than you having a DNA match with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Most likely, someone has just grabbed a spreadsheet and edited it without any accounting behind it whatsoever and allegedly used it to apply for tens of millions if not more in loans. My guess is most high school kids would be smarter than trying to pull something as stupid as this. Often banks want to drill down those numbers to get a sense of the detail and accuracy, etc - to get comfortable with the numbers. Can't do that with these statements because they're blatantly cooked.
TRUMP’S FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ARE SO FULL OF LIES THAT HIS ACCOUNTANTS PUT A WARNING LABEL ON THEM
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/trump-financial-statements-full-of-lies
In a 2011 document known as a “Statement of Financial Condition,” Trump purported to own 55 home lots ready to sell for at least $3 million apiece at his Southern California golf course. Yet, in reality, he’d only been zoned for 31, thereby overstating his future revenue by a cool $72-odd million. In a document from 2012, he tacked on an extra 800 acres to the size of his roughly 1,200 acre Virginia vineyard. In 2013, in an attempt to bolster his bid for the Buffalo Bills, a two-page “Summary of Net Worth” conveniently omitted his ownership of two hotels, in Chicago and Las Vegas, meaning, per the Post, “that some of Trump’s actual debt load was hidden from anyone reading the statement.” In perhaps the most brazen, Trumpian “exaggeration,” he invented an extra 10 stories at Trump Tower, claiming that the building was 68 stories when, in actuality—you can literally look at the building and count them—there are 58.
That's plain old bank fraud. If he's done the opposite on his tax returns, as Cohen alleges, they've Al Caponed him. Even some of the Trump deadheads will realize if the President cheats on his taxes, he probably shouldn't be President anymore.
If he's stashed money through subpoenaed Deutsche Bank like Manafort did, he's guilty of "hiding foreign bank accounts" like Manafort was. So he has that financial vulnerability with his CFO functioning with a partial plea deal when we last heard.
This is pretty appalling stuff. Trump has to fight as hard as he can to try to stop them from looking at his taxes because he has to know that he likely cannot survive the scrutiny. His problem is that a judge with grade school math is going to quickly understand there is something really wrong here and it is not wrong because it is politically motivated. It is wrong because his numbers are too fantastic for any rational accountant to believe.
If he is that stupid to play those sorts of stupid games with his financial statements, he's very likely in very deep trouble.
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