The near- billion dollar assessment of Mar-a-lago in large part assumes what it COULD be worth if parceled out into individual lots and converted into single family mansions. Of course, it CANNOT be parceled out like that because the zoning of the existing plot prohibits that in perpetuity. That seems to be one of the factors that aggravated the judge so much because that very issue seems to have come up before. That, coupled with "It doesn't matter what I evaluate a property at cuz I can always get a Saudi to offer whatever amount I say."

Trump's inflation of the square footage of his penthouse apartment within Trump Tower ALONE should have been enough to seal this case. His apartment occupies ONE FLOOR of the building. The OUTSIDE DIMENSIONS of the building equate to about 10,000 square feet. A single floor apartment in a 10,000 square foot footprint building cannot comprise 31,000 square feet. One would think any bank seeing such claims about the apartment as collateral could have verified that with Wilipedia without leaving their chair.

I'm glad Trump is finally seeing justice on this but it never should have reached this point. This has been Trump's modus operandi for 40 plus years and journalists like David Cay Johnson have been covering this for at least 15 years. The lies were so blatant that any audit would have turned up dozens of charges in a week or two of effort.


WTH