Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 1
Would this end up bailing Trump out of all his cash-strapped woes? Could he use this as collateral that a lender would be happy with? I guess the stock could tank after going public which would still be a huge risk.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-truth-social...Former President Donald Trump's Truth Social is set to become part of a publicly traded company after a long-delayed merger was finally approved.
On Friday, a shell company created solely to buy Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, approved the merger, according to The New York Times.
Trump might make billions from Truth Social just as he's most in need of cash
How NY's Judge Engoron is tightening the leash on Trump ahead of looming Truth Social merger and fraud judgement deadline
Former 'apprentices' and Trump Media cofounders file lawsuit claiming company execs tried to dilute their stake ahead of a potential merger
Trump's net worth will jump more than $3 billion from the deal, based on his large stake in the social media platform he helped create in the wake of his post-January 6, 2021 Capitol riot bans on mainstream platforms.
But Trump won't be able to sell his shares for at least six months unless the company's board waives a previous lockup agreement. There are also ongoing lawsuits between shareholders that could complicate the company's future.
If Trump wants to access his money sooner, he'll need the company's new board to sign off. That may not be a problem, as The Washington Post pointed out, the board will be stacked with Trump's allies.
No. of Recommendations: 3
Would this end up bailing Trump out of all his cash-strapped woes? Could he use this as collateral that a lender would be happy with?
No and possibly.
As you point out, the shares are locked up. So Trump can't immediately use them to pay or bond the judgment - certainly not by Monday. So this wouldn't solve all his cash-strapped woes, since he has a very immediate need for liquidity.
A lender or surety might be willing to accept them as collateral if the lock-up is removed - with a huge caveat. They probably wouldn't value the shares at the current price if they're issuing a bond. That's because if a judgment bond is called, the surety has to pay within a very short period of time (ten days, I believe, in NY). Since they'd have to sell quickly, the price they could get would be lower than the short-term market price. If the current market price for DWAC/DJT is $30 a share, you can absolutely sell one share at that price - but you probably can't sell $460 million worth of shares at that price.
Plus, there's the issue of whether the company would be worth anything if the surety company, rather than DJT, owned those shares. One model of the company is that all of the value derives from Trump's engagement with it. If Trump doesn't have a big ownership interest in the company, then he'll lose interest in it and stop engaging with it; and if he's not involved, the value will plummet. IOW, the stock is only valuable as long as Trump owns it - which makes it pretty useless as collateral to a loan or bond.
But if there's a big enough cushion, and the shares are only part of the collateral, it might get him out of his short-term liquidity hole.
No. of Recommendations: 6
I don't think this IPO will solve his immediate problems.
First, he needs cash TODAY (well, technically, Monday 3/26) and in any circumstance, shares in this IPO are locked up for six months before insiders can sell.
Second, even after six months when he would be able to cash out a huge portion of the shares to net $550 million, someone actually has to BUY those shares at the insanely inflated price that led to the initial expected $3.x billion dollar evaluation. That's an iffy proposition. The company itself is not making any money. As of August 2022, Truth Social owed about $1.6 million in unpaid monthly compute charges to the data center running its servers. As of November 2023, filings as of mid-2023 showed the firm accumulating a loss of $31 million since launch.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/trumps-truth-so...Keep in mind, the launch of Truth Social was not much of a capital investment. Messaging software is not terribly advanced and the service is running on leased compute so it's not like the firm had to spend $50 million up front for hardware to go live then have to crawl out of the red back to black before making money. The compute bills rise in lock step with usage and if you are losing money from inception, the business model is NOT making money.
Anyone buying in on IPO day at the insane valuation will have six months to contemplate their potential mistake and try to cash out ahead of the other suckers. The minute anyone does that, the price will go down, leaving Trump with less to cash out when his six month lockout ends.
If the SPAC nets a giant payday from the IPO of a company losing money, that would imply they somehow already found every sucker willing to buy the next Trump Steaks. If everyone dumb enough to buy up the shares is already all-in, any attempt to flood the market with more available shares as Trump cashes out will drive the price down and shrink his take as he attempts to cash out. Of course, that doesn't prevent a Saudi prince or a Russian despot from buying up shares to help their buddy out. Of course, in six months, Trump's larger trajectory may be headed in a vastly different direction and the prince and the despot may realize there's no payoff for bailing him out and may decline to help.
Although the leaders of the SPAC driving this deal voted to approve the IPO, a former employee of the SPAC sued the SPAC in February 2024 to block any transaction until his share of the deal was increased. It isn't clear where that suit stands or whether it was resolved as part of the recent vote of remaining board members of the SPAC. It seems likely though that nothing involving Trump will go smoothly on schedule from a legal standpoint.
Perhaps the biggest unknown in this aspect of the Trump financial saga is whether the terms he'll have to reach with the State of New York regarding these judgments will include visibility into Trump's PERSONAL accounts and other business deals launched outside the context of The Trump Organization. One would hope there would be equal monitoring in place on ANYTHING Trump does and there would be SEC insight into who buys giant blocks of shares in this new company. Of course, nefarious actors could easily create hundreds of shell companies then use those shells to buy up shares of Truth Social and evade discovery of the actual underlying party.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 1
I like much of what he says.
It's stuff I've said since the 90's, and then on TMF in the 00's and stuff the Conservatives took 20 years to come around to.
BUT as I've said even in 2016 when I voted for him - -this guy knows nothing but chaos.
He could have the true formula to eternal life, to invincibility, to all things good and holy and he could take it public....
I wouldn't put a dollar in it.
That being said I hope he gets a huge cash infusion.
No. of Recommendations: 1
At least the "Monitor" will know from whom and whence Trump gets his bond -
https://twitter.com/KatiePhang/status/177087492552...The Trump Organization shall inform the Monitor, in advance, of any efforts to secure surety bonds, including any financial disclosures requested or required, any information provided in response to such requests, and representations made by Trump Organization in connection with securing such bonds, any personal guarantees made by any of the Defendants, and any obligations of the Trump Organization required by the surety.
No. of Recommendations: 2
this is a complex grift detailed elsewhere.
for what i can tell, DWAC\TS will probably not help trump.
in fact, other than trump squirming about gift taxes, it would be far simpler for a wealthy friend-of-MAGA to give him the money than bother trying to launder it through this business disaster.
No. of Recommendations: 2
This will be interesting. Ticker DJT is probably heading to zero, similar to other DJT bankruptcies. SPACs have lost about half their market cap in the last 3 years, while the market was up over 20%.
=== links and data ===
Truth Social company completes merger, March 22, 2024
"Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corporation -- a special purpose acquisition company -- approved a merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social. The company can begin trading as a public company, with the stock symbol DJT on Nasdaq, as early as next week."
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-truth-social-comp...We Have a Boom in Reverse Stock Splits to Keep the Ballooning Imploded Stocks Listed a While Longer: This Stuff is Just Funny, Feb 23, 2024
"Our pantheon of Imploded Stocks, which we started in the spring of 2021 as this stuff was coming apart, is full of stocks that, after imploding, did massive reverse stock splits so that the share price would go back above $1 in order to keep the shares from getting delisted. Most of them are traded on the Nasdaq. Many are SPAC or IPO creatures of the free-money-era."
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/02/23/this-stuff-is-ju... Date Count SPACs
20151230 28
20161230 32
20171229 49
20181231 67
20191231 87
20201231 211
20211231 614
20221230 525
20231229 245
20240315 212
from 20210315 to 20240315:
Screen CAGR TR
SPAC2024 -16 -40
SPAC2024_SIP -19 -46
SP500EqualWeight 7 22
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~SPAC2024_SIP:h253::styp.a:...https://gtr1.net/2013/?~SP500EqualWeight:h63::sp50...https://gtr1.net/2013/?~SPAC2024:h253::styp.a:et16...SPACs with largest market cap 20240315:
Ticker MktCap DollarVolume Exchange Price Name
CVII 1472 3.3 NASDAQ 11 CHURCHILL CAPITAL CORP VII CL A
DWAC 1169 126.9 NASDAQ 39 DIGITAL WORLD ACQUISITION CORP CL A
CONX 825 0.0 NASDAQ 11 CONX CORP CL A CL C
SCRM 800 6.7 NASDAQ 11 SCREAMING EAGLE ACQUISITION CORP CL A
AACT 660 1.7 NYSE 11 ARES ACQUISITION CORP II CL A
SLAM 630 0.6 NASDAQ 11 SLAM CORP CL A ORDINARY SHARE
GHIX 556 0.2 NASDAQ 11 GORES HOLDINGS IX INC CL A
ALCC 553 1.7 NYSE 11 ALTC ACQUISITION CORP CL A
IVCB 387 0.6 NASDAQ 11 INVESTCORP EUROPE ACQUISITION CORP I CL A
ROSS 382 0.2 NYSE 11 ROSS ACQUISITION CORP II CL A
TWLV 380 0.1 NASDAQ 11 TWELVE SEAS INVESTMENT COMPANY II CL A
BFAC 379 0.3 NYSE 11 BATTERY FUTURE ACQUISITION CORP CL A
NFYS 373 0.6 NYSE 11 ENPHYS ACQUISITION CORP CL A
TRTL 371 0.5 NYSE 11 TORTOISEECOFIN ACQUISITION CORP III CL A
HCVI 355 0.5 NASDAQ 10 HENNESSY CAPITAL INVESTMENT CORP VI CL A
ANSC 351 1.5 NASDAQ 10 AGRICULTURE & NATURAL SOLUTIONS ACQUISITION CORP CL A
GPAC 337 0.3 NASDAQ 11 GLOBAL PARTNER ACQUISITION CORP II CL A ORDINARY SHARE
CHAA 336 0.2 NYSE MKT 11 CATCHA INVESTMENT CORP CL A
ARRW 335 0.2 NASDAQ 11 ARROWROOT ACQUISITION CORP CL A
RRAC 334 0.5 NYSE 11 RIGEL RESOURCE ACQUISITION CORP CL A
MktCap is $million
DollarVolume is 63-day average dollar volume in $million.
No. of Recommendations: 8
In an appearance on MSNBC, career Trump journalist David Cay Johnson -- who described in excruciating detail the full extent of Trump's life of grifting for all to read well before 2016 -- pointed out some key aspects of the 6-month freeze period after IPO and ways it can be circumvented.
Technically, owners of the SPAC cannot unload shares in the spun-off company DJT for 6 months after the IPO date. But...
Trump can petition the partners to alter the terms of the deal to allow him to sell prior to that date. But...
Per other restrictions (SEC rules? NY state law? not totally clear what was being referenced...), even if the 6-month freeze period is relaxed, Trump would still be limited to selling no more than 1% of the outstanding shares in any month (or maybe quarter, I may be mis-remembering what he said). Which essentially means Trump would still be constrained from selling enough of his share to come close to covering his $554 million dollars in judgments or likely even another $100 million towards a bond from someone else to cover the $554 million. But...
As Cay Johnson put it, Wall Street solved this problem back during the beginning of the Internet bubble in the late 1990s. If a budding billionaire-to-be tech CEO takes a company public and wants to begin leading the high life even though they technically don't have their billions for another six months, there's another alternative for reaching the gold brick road earlier. The person facing the 6-month freeze can enter into a contract with someone else to accept the shares in 6 months in exchange for cash now. Of course, the person on the other side of this "deal" is facing a HUGE risk because the vast majority of stocks decline precipitously after IPO and the taker of this deal would be facing all of that downside over the six months. Of course, no smart investor with a billion dollars laying around coveted by the person in the 6-month freeze is going to take that risk blindly. They don't. They take out a naked short position on the stock involved and hedge their position.
So it IS conceptually possible for a deal to be cobbled together prior to the end of March 25 that could rescue Trump. Whether such a deal materializes depends upon the willingness of another party to venture into any economic deal with Trump that will likely trigger additional litigation (remember, four partners in the original SPAC deal are suing each other already over perceived efforts to cheat someone else out of their due share of the SPAC IPO).
Pulling back the lens a bit to look at Trump's larger situation, it may become more apparent over the next few weeks if Trump's political support is nearing some sort of half-life decay point.
* Dems have raised nearly $95 million for Biden + Congressional races
* Reps have only raised about $43 million between Trump directly, Trump's PAC and RNC
* leadership of RNC has been outsed and replaced with lackeys who are willing to shift
RNC money to Trump legal bills
* Trump PAC is already shifting dollars from his individual "campaign" to his legal bills
* Trump PAC is on track to have $0 by June at current inflow / outflow rates
* state Republican Party coffers in many states are FAR below norms for a Presidential election year
* state Republican Party leadership is in turmoil in many states
* RNC has already cut national campaign staff
I'd like to think that something similar to this mini four-paragraph play is transpiring in every red-leaning hamlet across the hinterlands:
Honeybun, we're out of food and Darrel Jr., Darrel Jr., Darrel Jr. and Darla are hungry. Can you go to Dollar General and pick up some dry dog food and a 2 liter bottle of Coke for dinner?
Well, I'd love to but the Taurus is outta gas and I was watching the news on The Daily Grifter and they had a clip of the fat guy climbing in his private 757 and he said he needed money to keep Trump Tower and his resort so I signed up to buy a square of toilet paper that was at one point stuck to the bottom of his shoe with our last $18.92 in the checking account. That included rush shipping so don't shoot at the FedEx guy tomorrow when he comes to the house.
Well dammit Darrel, I was gonna buy birth control with that.
Woman, I told you, the orange one says we don't believe in that anymore. We're just gonna have to take the kids on a walk on I-95 looking for something fresh.
The reality is that the truly MAGA faithful are likely to be unfazed by ANY of this since frankly, they are financially innumerate and have already proven they are gullible beyond rescue. However, more moderate Republicans who might have been tempted to hold their nose and vote for Trump could be getting fatiqued from his constant whining about persecution and requests for money.
At some point, one has to believe the Big Bang levels of energy being produced by the cognitive dissonance of a "billionaire" bilking millions of non-billionaires have to get released somehow. It's just a matter of when and what the final tipping point event will be. I'm not sure the current insanity can last until the Republican convention.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 2
i still stick to the belief that any MAGA benefactor could far simply give trump the money, and let him grift the gift taxes from other sources later on.
if its some foreign authoritarian BFF, they would need risk exposure to their valuable money laundering network, which is why putin may not be that interested. but koch,musk,saudis,etc... have more legitimate channels.
economic viability of TS cannot possibly be a factor in any rescue.
as you have rightly implied on recent DWAC history, legal shorts have both microscopic volume (few hundred shares, if any) with annualized cost of 250% the share price itself (+ theoretical infinite downside of meme spikes). so not a viable hedge against even a 0.1% long position.
but out of curiosity, you mean naked shorting as in the benefactor would be willing themselves to engage in criminal activity? or do you mean through some options play?
'Naked shorting is the illegal practice of selling short shares that have not yet been determined to exist or that the trader hasn't secured in some way.'
investopedia
No. of Recommendations: 2
but out of curiosity, you mean naked shorting as in the benefactor would be willing themselves to engage in criminal activity? or do you mean through some options play?
That was the term Cay Johnson used but I presume he meant via legitimate options trades. However, I think his point was and my point here is that any "legitimate" options trade is different than any practical options trade. Any option trade is already highly leveraged and works most effectively if the quantity of shares involved is a mininscule fraction of total shares being actively traded every day. For new shares in a company that was operating for 3-5 years privately and earning tens or hundreds of millions in cash, daily volume for that stock is likely to provide good liquidity in a predictable price range. If one trader comes along and wants to bet that firm will trade 30% lower than that range 6 months or 12 months out, it will be possible to find others willing to bet the opposite for a price and make a deal.
Truth Social won't exhibit either of those characteristics. The company has never made a profit and no published plan outlines how or when management expects to turn a profit. Those are not circumstances that will support a large short position worth potentially 14% ($455 million / $3.2 billion = 14.2%) of the expected market cap at the end of trading on IPO. To set up a short, you have to find a trader willing to bet the other way and there is probably no one on the planet that expects DJT to be trading at its IPO price that far out.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 0
* Dems have raised nearly $95 million for Biden + Congressional races
* Reps have only raised about $43 million between Trump directly, Trump's PAC and RNC
* leadership of RNC has been outsed and replaced with lackeys who are willing to shift
RNC money to Trump legal bills
* Trump PAC is already shifting dollars from his individual "campaign" to his legal bills
* Trump PAC is on track to have $0 by June at current inflow / outflow rates
* state Republican Party coffers in many states are FAR below norms for a Presidential election year
* state Republican Party leadership is in turmoil in many states
* RNC has already cut national campaign staff
Hmm...it sounds like he could use a way to get a bunch of free publicity. I wonder what he could do...
Wait...I know, I know! He could make outrageous statements every day, and try to make his lawsuits drag on and on instead of being eager to get to trial and show his innocence. Then he'd be all over the TV news, and might even get people to donate money to cover his legal fees. It could work... Whaddaya think?
No. of Recommendations: 1
Wait...I know, I know! He could make outrageous statements every day, and try to make his lawsuits drag on and on instead of being eager to get to trial and show his innocence. Then he'd be all over the TV news, and might even get people to donate money to cover his legal fees. It could work... Whaddaya think?
-----------
Could be. Perhaps it is his best strategy since he doesn't have access to infinite state funding like his opponents.
No. of Recommendations: 4
"In an appearance on MSNBC, career Trump journalist David Cay Johnson -- who described in excruciating detail the full extent of Trump's life of grifting for all to read well before 2016 -- pointed out some key aspects of the 6-month freeze period after IPO and ways it can be circumvented.
Technically, owners of the SPAC cannot unload shares in the spun-off company DJT for 6 months after the IPO date. But...
Trump can petition the partners to alter the terms of the deal to allow him to sell prior to that date. But..."
If I am not mistaken (and I might be), there are also two other big issues with the merger:
1. There are lawsuits between many of the founders and Trump over bonus shares being given out. All of the parties involved recognize that this is literally a ticking time bomb that is eventually going to blow up, so they all agreed to put the disputed ownership shares in escrow pending the lawsuits so that the merger can go forward and they can start the 6 month clock ticking before they can cash out. So there are still lawsuits about the disputed shares and none of the owners actually know how much of the company they really own.
2. There are also some outstanding warrants that vest immediately after the merger is complete. The owner of those warrants is not public knowledge. Whomever owns those warrants can exercise them and start dumping those shares. It could be Trump, it could be the founders (the Apprentice contestants), it could be some angel investor who wanted to stay secret.
Point is, the stock is already dropping, there will probably already be some selling pressure long before the 6-month waiting period is up. Will Trump and the founders find enough suckers/cultists to keep the stock price afloat long enough for them to dump their shares? This isn't a small growing start up we are talking about. This is a company with a shrinking active user base. It is 100% reliant on one particular user. It is a company with many other competitors that have growing active user bases and plans to grow. It is a company with a terrible balance sheet and terrible prospects. It is a ticking time bomb.
Everyone knows that in 6 months there is going to be huge selling pressure on the stock price. So any stockholder who can sell is going to sell before then. It is going to be like yelling fire in a crowded theater, except is this case there is an actual dumpster fire in the theater. Lots of people are going to get hurt in the stampede to the exits.
It is interesting to see a huge and obvious fleecing of the public take place in real time and there not is a damn thing any regulator can do about it other than hold insiders to their contractual restrictions.
No. of Recommendations: 3
It is interesting to see a huge and obvious fleecing of the public take place in real time and there not is a damn thing any regulator can do about it other than hold insiders to their contractual restrictions. - Umm
----------------
Don't despair dear Umm. Your side has an ace in the hole.....
Stay tuned for Season 2 of Get Trump By Any Means Possible
Debuts soon after the IPO launches. Watch as our intrepid NY AG Letica James digs into the IPO filing. Prospectuses (prospectii?) are typically loaded with charts, numbers, projections, disclaimers and whatnot to explain the risks of investing. Trump stands to collect $3B for his share and Letica won’t stand for it. In the thousands of pages of IPO documents filed with the SEC and NASDAQ, there is guaranteed to be an estimate or two that she can take exception to. Letica can claim Trump fraudulently overstated the value of TS and obtained more than fair value for his shares.
Watch as a favorable judge stipulates that fraud has occurred and holds a trial only to determine “damages”. If Letica is even awarded a paltry 25% of Trumps share. then Trump has 30 days to come up with $750M if he dares to appeal. Watch breathlessly as Trump twists and turns as he sweats out the deadline. Will he sell other assets to placate Queen Letica? Can Letica find fault in that sale whatever form it takes? Sure she can. Look for Season 3 to find out how.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Stay tuned for Season 2 of Get Trump By Any Means Possible
------------------------
Grab him by the low hanging fruits! Deez nuts!
Watch as a favorable judge stipulates that fraud has occurred
Ixnay on the ipulatestnay! Trump says the chart is correct, he did it, but no one was hurt. Damages are determined by a hired expert. But we now get wire and securities fraud - it's a fraud fest!
Cannon rules in Trump's favor that he has the power to designate personal - not subject to review.
An oligarch pays Trump's fine and he is now happy with China, vowing to call off Fonops if he is elected.
Trump pulls a billion out of TS before it dies.
No. of Recommendations: 4
"Could be. Perhaps it is his best strategy since he doesn't have access to infinite state funding like his opponents."
---------------------------------------------------
just curious, are you or anybody you know going to invest in DJT the "stock " ??
This has "pump and dump" written all over it, but the small "investors" can probably trust the person DJT to not do them like that #/sarcasm
( I know BHM is too smart to fall prey to this scam. I'm thinking of buying 1 share so that I
can say I own DJT, lol. I'm not a libtard, but if I can get a printout of that 1 share and
show it to some friends, it'll be good for a few chuckles over some beers )
No. of Recommendations: 3
other than a left-field 'take private for cash' buyout scenario from a non-economic party, there will be a chain of public events that would each would progressively, or drastically, tank the DJT share price. (notably, unknown holders of: immediate convertible dilution, then warrant based sales as soon as trading commences)
this is even more interesting if trump has a notion to modify his share lockup terms, which seems theoretically possible, but very unlikely to be an effective monetization tactic given the slow sequence of dependent events. it also assumes no further SEC scrutiny.
a most interesting dynamic at play is measuring the TAM appetite\action of current and possibly future MAGA retail investors. the total number of MAGA that are also stock investors is a major unknown, but this could be more valuable as each insider makes a move on their stake and needs someone to sell to.
of course no one looks at TS for estimating this, but sites like reddit, seeking alpha, X, have a significant number of enthusiastic MAGA posters in the investment world. but how many of these are fake or bots? and what is the logic for fake enthusiasm? are they just there for chaos? an economic basis cannot distinguish a real DJT stock enthusiast from a fake, given no viability for TS as a business.
again, this will someday make a much better movie than 'dumb money'.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Another great write up WTH. I believe that a corrupt charlatan who spent his entire professional career in extortion, illegal payment schemes, breaking contracts and not getting caught will figure out this shell game quickly. As a sign of how corrupt the Repubs have become, Spiro Agnew was taken down in ‘73 for about 1/10000th of the grift Trump is taking right now.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Spiro-Agnew
No. of Recommendations: 1
I'm thinking of buying 1 share so that I
can say I own DJT, lol. I'm not a libtard, but if I can get a printout of that 1 share
-----------------------
Trump's making Golden NFTs of shares if you're interested. :-)
No. of Recommendations: 2
"Trump's making Golden NFTs of shares if you're interested. :-)"
Lol, nah, there ain't nothing Trump's got that I want. Upon further review, I wouldn't buy a single share of DJT even as a joke. :-)
No. of Recommendations: 12
"Don't despair dear Umm. Your side has an ace in the hole....."
I have no despair over it. I find human nature to be fascinating and this is one huge example of something where people are fooled by something that is painfully obvious. It is no different than watching idiots continue to use Fox News as an information source long after it has been made clear to them that Fox news isn't an information source.
"Stay tuned for Season 2 of Get Trump By Any Means Possible"
I can see why someone why doesn't believe in rule of law and equal justice like yourself thinks like that.
"Debuts soon after the IPO launches. Watch as our intrepid NY AG Letica James digs into the IPO filing. Prospectuses (prospectii?) are typically loaded with charts, numbers, projections, disclaimers and whatnot to explain the risks of investing. Trump stands to collect $3B for his share and Letica won’t stand for it. In the thousands of pages of IPO documents filed with the SEC and NASDAQ, there is guaranteed to be an estimate or two that she can take exception to. Letica can claim Trump fraudulently overstated the value of TS and obtained more than fair value for his shares.
Watch as a favorable judge stipulates that fraud has occurred and holds a trial only to determine “damages”. If Letica is even awarded a paltry 25% of Trumps share. then Trump has 30 days to come up with $750M if he dares to appeal. Watch breathlessly as Trump twists and turns as he sweats out the deadline. Will he sell other assets to placate Queen Letica? Can Letica find fault in that sale whatever form it takes? Sure she can. Look for Season 3 to find out how"
LOL, you actually think your description is accurate. You are a funny man. You often like to claim you post here because you like to learn. I don't believe that for a second because someone who likes to learn changes their views and behavior when they learn something new. You don't do that.
As for Trump, if he cannot "do the time" so to speak, then he shouldn't have committed the crime of fraud.
As for you, I find it sad that our justice system has had literally thousands of innocent people who have spent a significant portion of their lives in prison due to overzealous prosecutors or law enforcement personnel abusing their authority only to have it made clear they were innocent of those crimes years later (and conservative estimates that there are at least an order of magnitude more still in prison or who have died in prison). We never hear a peep about those people from the likes of you. Or if you do say something it is likely to be in support of the cops or prosecutors. Yet here we have a billionaire with a long history of conning people out of money, defrauding others, stealing from taxpayers, selling out veterans, etc. He has spent at least $50 million dollars on the best lawyers he can buy. That is the guy you are going to go to bat for.
Trump loves suckers and losers.
No. of Recommendations: 9
Mike,
I am quite aware of problems in our justice system and instances of law enforcement/prosecutors taking their authority too far. Growing up in the Midwest in the late 1980's/early 1990's there were lots of stories about police torturing suspects in order to coerce a confession out of them. Particularly Officer Jon Burge of the Chicago police department:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_BurgeRight after that time there were lots action by various law schools around the country to take up the causes of innocent people who ended up on death row. The effort I was most aware of at the time was at Northwestern University where they fought for and freed numerous death row inmates. There was also the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law in New York:
https://innocenceproject.org/As someone who greatly respected the ideal of the judicial system in this country while also recognizing the resultant blatant unfairness embedded in it regarding poor and minority people, I have long tried to support efforts that would use the system to try and right the worst wrongs. I have made donations to the Innocence Project for at least the past 25 years.
If you truly care about abuses in our justice system, I would encourage you to do the same.
However, I don't think that is your cup of tea. They mostly help poor people on death row (which means mostly black and Latin people), furthermore, I am fairly sure you would have been one of the people supporting Jon Burge at the time as a heroic police officer who got things done, because let's face it, most of the people who were wrongly convicted may have been innocent of their crimes, but they were still likely to be low life scum. You seem the type who always take the side of a police officer over people like that no matter what especially when that victim is black (see George Floyd).
All of that said though, I am encouraged that you want to see justice. I would love it if this opened your eyes and you helped support stuff like the Innocence Project. If you are going to do that, perhaps you could refinance you house and take out the equity and donate it to a billionaire to help him pay the tens of millions in legal fees he generates from constantly defrauding people. After all, everyone deserves justice and a fair trial under the judicial system.
No. of Recommendations: 2
It will be interesting to see what happens with Trump tomorrow. I'm sure he hasn't secured the funding, I'm pretty sure he has exaggerated his liquidity so can't come up with the cash himself, and there has been no evidence of him liquidating assets (which he would have had to start weeks or months ago) to pay-up.
So...what? Will NY seize his assets (like Trump Tower) and sell them off? Or will he have a dodge that allows him to skate (i.e. rich people never seem to pay the piper, even when they are convicted or lose judgments). I guess we'll see.
Especially if they start seizing, this will give him whining ammo for his numerous rallies; portraying himself as the victim (as usual), and decrying the "deep state" and multiple conspiracies. Should be a good chunk of red meat to throw to his ravening followers.
What's really sort of amusing is that if he hadn't taken center stage in 2016, he might have been able to continue to skate with the status quo until he finally died. But because he craves the spotlight (and power), he subjected himself to increased scrutiny, and with that scrutiny was the realization he had been a naughty boy. And the more they dig, the naughtier he was found to have been. Plus, seeking power, he violated additional laws -allegedly, though I've heard the tape, so it's not really in doubt- that wouldn't have been available to him to break if he wasn't seeking power (e.g. I can't violate election laws because I'm not running for anything, and am not involved in the political process).
No. of Recommendations: 1
1pg: What's really sort of amusing is that if he hadn't taken center stage in 2016, he might have been able to continue to skate with the status quo until he finally died. But because he craves the spotlight (and power), he subjected himself to increased scrutiny, and with that scrutiny was the realization he had been a naughty boy. And the more they dig, the naughtier he was found to have been. Plus, seeking power, he violated additional laws -allegedly, though I've heard the tape, so it's not really in doubt- that wouldn't have been available to him to break if he wasn't seeking power (e.g. I can't violate election laws because I'm not running for anything, and am not involved in the political process).
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And more - he drew a huge target on himself with Jan 6. That had to be prosecuted, and it would be a miscarriage if all we did was prosecute the underlings and co conspirators. Our laws don't seem designed well for going after someone at the top. Also, Trump acquainted us with how much our government runs on norms that aren't law and can be violated seemingly at will. So as he was leaving, Trump attempted a self coup - unsuccessfully, but he tried.
Then the Classified and NDI debacle with Mar-a-Lago. He seemed to have a fetish for classified info that catered to his ego and possibly his pocketbook. So Trump did himself in.
Federal constraints left the states wide open to prosecute in state areas and where elections and interference affected the states. I don't think the founders quite envisioned this,but they were familiar with demagogues.
Assuming Trump isn't elected we'll have two years of trials and maybe some success. If he is elected, he pardons all Jan 6ers, co-conspirators, himself(if he can), Project 2025s the government while stripping civil servants of protections, abuses all presidential power, and the USA devolves from there.
No. of Recommendations: 2
while stripping civil servants of protections - Lapsody
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While reminding them that the entire administrative state draws its power from the consent of the people as reflected in their election of a president. Using their employment to undermine the policies of a lawfully elected president is an act of disenfranchisement and should be rooted out,
No. of Recommendations: 3
While reminding them that the entire administrative state draws its power from the consent of the people as reflected in their election of a president. Using their employment to undermine the policies of a lawfully elected president is an act of disenfranchisement and should be rooted out,The President does not get the powers of a King by being elected. He serves ALL of the people, not just those who elected him. And would you Mind explaining who and what this huge group of civil servants is that are using their employment to undermine the policies of the president? This sounds more like a rationalization for the failures of Trump's administration than reality. Or is what you want people who are willing to ignore the law and just follow orders?
What you want is that what Donald says goes? Ignore the Constitution, law, code, regs and do what Donald wants?
NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald told reporters Tuesday that the newly uncovered documents show just how destructive a revival of Schedule F could be if scaled across the federal government.
“The bottom line is, looking at OMB’s list, they stretched the definition of ‘policy-related’ to the point of absurdities,” she said. “Under these broad definitions, tens of thousands in every agency could be swept up in this, including many GS-12s and below. They tried to convert as many employees as possible regardless of their duties, just to make it easier for them to fire. If employees moved to Schedule F are removed entirely, they’ll be replaced by unqualified partisans, or they’ll stay knowing they can be fired at will, while we’re left with malfunctioning agencies and the rapid deterioration of the merit-based civil service.”
Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and a former dean of its School of Public Policy, said he was struck by how widely Trump’s OMB interpreted the definition of policy-related work.
“My mind went back to Sharpie-Gate, and if you look at that incident, you can see the kind of risks that could come through in the process we’re talking about,” he said. “You can imagine some people who are not going to be included, like air traffic controllers and TSA workers and maybe border guards, but in IRS how deep might it go? Or the people in Social Security calculating benefits? And that dividing line could always be subject to change.”
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/02/one-agen...
No. of Recommendations: 2
And would you Mind explaining who and what this huge group of civil servants is that are using their employment to undermine the policies of the president?
Getting rid of merit-based hiring in the government and making government employees just an extension of the partisan executive branch would be a disaster and would send our country's management back to the days before the Pendleton Act of 1883 when corruption was rife in the bureaucracy. This would be a disaster. Anyone who think this is a good idea is either stupid or happy to see our democracy corrupted into something like Putin's kleptocracy.
Nothing good comes out of MAGA.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Well...I have my answer about the bond. The judge has lowered the bond to $175M. I'm sure that is legal, but as some here complain "two-tiered justice". I'm sure if I had to put up a bond that a judge wouldn't reduce it by more than 60% because I claimed I couldn't pay it. I suspect I would get a "tough noogies" response from the court.
No. of Recommendations: 1
I suspect I would get a "tough noogies" response from the court.
Perhaps if you sprayed yourself orange and crapped on a 14k gold plated toilet the judge would be more sympathetic to your cause.
No. of Recommendations: 5
NPR: <"In a news conference on Monday, Trump lauded Truth Social's performance despite its poor financial health.
"Truth Social is doing very well," he said. "It's hot as a pistol and doing great."
In filings Truth Social has said it only had revenue of just over $3 million in the first nine months of last year and lost nearly $50 million during that period.">
In today's episode of MAGA word salad, Don Poorleone also claimed MAGaLAGO was worth 50 to 100 times the $18 million evaluation made by the court.
That's $1,800,000,000.00 ... One Billion Eight Hundred Million!
Yeah, shorting DJT sounds interesting.
