The Trump Card...

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
I think the Mazars declaration and exit will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. It will be the event that triggers the Trump Organization to collapse like a house of cards as Trump's lenders and business partners begin to see Trump as "Donald the Doomed" and begin their race to claim Trump's prized assets before others do.

Admittedly, I'm taking a leap here, assuming Trump's lenders and partners will respond as I suggest above. My view is conditioned by my own business experience in which Diane and I have submitted financial statements and tax returns to our lenders and business partners. When doing so, we must attest to their accuracy as a condition of doing business with these entities.
Looking into this further, I learned Trump and Mazars included hedges in at least some of their financial statements that Trump will no doubt use if those statements become the basis of claims that he did not tell the truth on the statements. The unreliably of Trump's financial statements -- at least some of them -- is not a surprise to those who read the fine print. Trump pretty much told his statement readers that the statements were unreliable when he provided the statements.

Trump still finds himself without an accounting firm, which itself is a major issue. But the Mazars declaration that Trump's financial statements are unreliable may not be as catastrophic to Trump as I first thought, because Trump and Mazars said that all along; at least in the statements Forbes is reporting about in the piece below.

Note that we do not know what statements Trump gave to what lenders, and what hedges, if any, those contained.

"In all three years, the accountants issued a word of caution: 'Because the significance and pervasiveness of the matters discussed above make it difficult to assess their impact on the statement of financial condition, users of this financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump if they had access to a revised statement' that complied with GAAP standards.

“'They were doing their own risk management,' says Francine McKenna, an accountant and former Forbes contributor.

"In other words, for years Trump’s accountants were willing to sign off on their famous client’s numbers—but admitted that if you want to know what Trump is really worth, you might not want to look at his balance sheet at all."
(Source)
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Trump's response to Mazars terminating their long-time relationship with him is interesting. Almost always, when someone parts company with Trump, either because he fired them or because they left on their own, he viciously slams them. There are a couple exceptions but those are few in number. But this time, when Mazars, Trump's long-time accounting company, left him and also announced that Trump's financial statements of the last 10 years are unreliable, Trump praises this firm.

What's up with that?
 

Ragman

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Trump's response to Mazars terminating their long-time relationship with him is interesting. Almost always, when someone parts company with Trump, either because he fired them or because they left on their own, he viciously slams them. There are a couple exceptions but those are few in number. But this time, when Mazars, Trump's long-time accounting company, left him and also announced that Trump's financial statements of the last 10 years are unreliable, Trump praises this firm.

What's up with that?
He's actually concerned.
 
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RLENT

Veteran Expediter
He's actually concerned.

He should be.

The way it works in NY State is they have this law called "Little RICO", which is modeled after the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law (RICO).

One of the differences though is that when you get hauled in to testify in front of a Grand Jury is that it comes with a grant of personal immunity from prosecution for any criminal acts disclosed in your testimony.

That's kind of like a free "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

Donald Bender, Trump's longtime accountant at Mazars, has so testified:

Trump’s longtime accountant testifies to N.Y. grand jury in criminal probe

Trump was Bender's only client.
 
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RLENT

Veteran Expediter
Federal prosecutors have constitutional and statutory duties to disclose many types of
evidence to defendants. This principle of disclosure is central to our criminal-justice system. “A prosecutor that withholds evidence on demand of an accused which, if made available, would tend to exculpate him or reduce the penalty helps shape a trial that bears heavily on the
defendant . . . That casts the prosecutor in the role of an architect of a proceeding that does not comport with standards of justice.”

In the near decade the Undersigned has sat on the bench in the Southern District of New York, the vast majority of Assistant United States Attorneys before the Court have embraced their disclosure obligations, worked diligently to meet them, and forthrightly admitted when they did not.

But not all. In this case, federal prosecutors have by their own admission repeatedly violated their disclosure obligations and, at best, toed the line with respect to their duty of candor. Over the course of years in this prosecution—before, during, and after trial—the
Government has made countless belated disclosures of arguably (and, in one instance, admittedly) exculpatory evidence. For some pieces of evidence, the Government provides plausible explanations for its late disclosure. For others, it provides no explanation at all. And when the Court pressed for more information about one of these failures, the Government made a misrepresentation to the Court. This serious dereliction requires a serious response.

The Court hoped that the Government’s response would create a record sufficient to resolve these issues. Instead, the Government revealed an array of additional errors, including disclosure failures and new admissions of misconduct related to the Government’s handling of search-warrant returns.

The Government also revealed new, highly problematic internal communications between the AUSAs who prosecuted this case. In particular, in the middle of trial, Government lawyers allegedly realized for the first time that they had not turned over a particular document to the defense. Instead of immediately disclosing that file, Government lawyers spent almost twenty hours strategizing how best to turn it over. One prosecutor suggested to another that they“bury” the evidence along with other, already-disclosed documents, and the second prosecutor agreed. And after looping in more prosecutors, the Government did just that, obfuscating its disclosure.

My goodness ... none of that sounds very good at all ... particularly given the fact that it's coming from a Federal Judge ...

:oops:
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Per NBC News, "Former President Donald Trump issued a lengthy [five-page] response Tuesday after the accounting firm Mazars USA said a decade’s worth of financial statements from his company can no longer be viewed as reliable."

I would love to read the entire response but cannot find it online. The news organizations that mention it do not provide a link. I found nothing on the donaldjtrump.com or 45office.com websites. Google searches of related words and phrases produce no links to the statement. It is said to be a public statement. No one is denying it was issued. It's gotta be out there somewhere.

Can any of you help me find this statement? Where can it be seen in its entirety?

UPDATE: This is the best I found so far:
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
He's actually concerned.
He should be. While no official has openly named Mazars as a cooperating witness, all indications are that Mazars has flipped and is now fully cooperating with the NY investigation(s). They cleared the way to do that in their recent statement in which they said a non-waiveable conflict of interest exists between this accounting firm and their client Trump.

In other words, Mazars has to cover it's own ass and must abandon Trump to do so.

It's not good news for Trump that his accounting firm of many years has turned on him. While Trump has buried investigators with millions of pages of documents, Mazars has the map and can quickly direct investigators to key info.

It continues to astound me that Trump has not viciously lashed out at Mazars like he has done with so many others. Mazars, in an instant, rendered a decade of Trump's financial statements unreliable. They suddenly left Donald and Melania with incomplete personal tax returns just a week before they were due. They abruptly left the entire Trump Organization without accounting services. They significantly degraded Trump's ability to get future credit on favorable terms. Their action may prompt some existing lenders to hike Trump's interest rates, demand audited financial statements, and/or call in their loans. Mazars utterly humiliated Trump in a very public way by taking the extremely rare action of firing client Trump.

And yet Trump has nothing but good things to say about Mazars. Astounding!
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
It seems to be really, really, really important to Donald Trump that people believe he is rich. So important, in fact, that when his former accounting firm says his financial statements are unreliable, he'll quickly issue a statement making claims about his wealth, and demonstrating knowledge of his numbers that undermine (contradict) crucial defense arguments Trump's attorneys filed with the Court just a day before.

In this, Trump handed Letitia James a free win. The New York AG exploited Trump's statement saying to the court:

“It is not unusual for parties to a legal proceeding to disagree about the facts,” the attorney general’s office wrote in a letter filed in New York state court. “But it is truly rare for a party to publicly disagree with statements submitted by his own attorneys in a signed pleading -- let alone one day after the pleading was filed.” (Source)

But that seems to be just fine with Trump. His actions suggest that the really, really, really important thing, and the super-urgent thing to address is that people believe Trump is rich. What his attorney's argue in court seems to be of secondary importance to Trump.

That's a priority order Trump may come to regret.
 
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ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
It's just a stalling tactic by Rudy ... probably another attempt to get Trump to pay his bill.


:tearsofjoy:
Interesting that Rudy was all smiles at Trump's Mara Largo Super Bowl party on 2/14. I don't want to read anything into that but Rudy being there is interesting to note.

Some say Rudy is going to fully cooperate with the Jan 6 committee. What does that mean? i don't know.
Rudy is seen smiling at a Trump party. What does that mean? I don't know.

Both items are interesting to me because I would love to see Rudy flip on Trump and fully cooperate with the committee. But I'm not going to start hoping for something where few definitive facts exist to support such a hope. Also, as whacked-out as some of Rudy's behavior and statements have been in recent months, his credibility as a witness would likely be questioned by the defense; and they'd have some very strong points to make.
 
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RLENT

Veteran Expediter
He should be. While no official has openly named Mazars as a cooperating witness, all indications are that Mazars has flipped and is now fully cooperating with the NY investigation(s). They cleared the way to do that in their recent statement in which they said a non-waiveable conflict of interest exists between this accounting firm and their client Trump.

In other words, Mazars has to cover it's own ass and must abandon Trump to do so.

Yup.

It's not good news for Trump that his accounting firm of many years has turned on him. While Trump has buried investigators with millions of pages of documents, Mazars has the map and can quickly direct investigators to key info.

It continues to astound me that Trump has not viciously lashed out at Mazars like he has done with so many others. Mazars, in an instant, rendered a decade of Trump's financial statements unreliable. They suddenly left Donald and Melania with incomplete personal tax returns just a week before they were due. They abruptly left the entire Trump Organization without accounting services. They significantly degraded Trump's ability to get future credit on favorable terms. Their action may prompt some existing lenders to hike Trump's interest rates, demand audited financial statements, and/or call in their loans.

Depends on who he's borrowing from.

This brings up the whole threat to national security aspect.

In the case of normal, legitimate financial institutions, yes - his ability is probably significantly degraded.

But in the case of foreign interests, there are probably a good number of them out there that would be quite happy to "loan" him substantial amounts of money ... and be quite happy to never see it repaid ... in exchange for decisions that would benefit their own interests which are obviously not necessarily the interests of the United States.

We've already seen how that financial flow works on a small scale (Trump's DC Hotel) and a much larger scale (Kushner - aka "Boy Wonder")

Mazars utterly humiliated Trump in a very public way by taking the extremely rare action of firing client Trump.

And it is glorious ...

:tearsofjoy:

And yet Trump has nothing but good things to say about Mazars. Astounding!

There's a method to the madness.
 

RLENT

Veteran Expediter
Interesting that Rudy was all smiles at Trump's Mara Largo Super Bowl party on 2/14. I don't want to read anything into that but Rudy being there is interesting to note.

Some say Rudy is going to fully cooperate with the Jan 6 committee. What does that mean? i don't know.

It means they are misinformed.

:tearsofjoy:

Rudy is seen smiling at a Trump party. What does that mean? I don't know.

He has quite a drinking habit apparently.

Starting early in the day.

Probably for good reason.

Both items are interesting to me because I would love to see Rudy flip on Trump and fully cooperate with the committee. But I'm not going to start hoping for something where few definitive facts exist to support such a hope. Also, as whacked-out as some of Rudy's behavior and statements have been in recent months, his credibility as a witness would likely be questioned by the defense; and they'd have some very strong points to make.

His only likely use as a cooperator, would likely be to provide documents (if he had any - which is probably doubtful, given El Donaldo's notoriety regarding unwillingness to put things in writing) and point to others which might have something of value in terms of evidence.
 

muttly

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Just heard Rudy on his radio show talking about the Dems newest Witch hunt.
He was basically laughing at the LSL’s.
 
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