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Tag: rudolph giuliani
Why Trump's Delaying Tactics Will Lead To Further Self-Destruction

Why Trump's Delaying Tactics Will Lead To Further Self-Destruction

Alex Jones did it two years ago to avoid paying a $1.5 billion jury award for defaming the parents and relatives of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. Rudolph Giuliani did it just before Christmas to escape a $148 million jury award for defaming two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of vote tampering.

Now, there’s a good chance Donald Trump will do it, too, given that a judge on Friday ordered him to pay $454 million, including interest, for persistent business fraud, and the $88.3 million he already owed advice columnist E. Jean Carroll for defaming her and, after being found liable for defaming her, did it again.

It refers to seeking refuge from creditors in federal bankruptcy court. Ultimately, a bankruptcy filing is unlikely to save Trump from paying what he owes, according to Professor Gregory L. Germain, who teaches bankruptcy law at Syracuse University College of Law.

Germain, my law school colleague for many years, says what Trump can achieve is delays, but almost certainly not escaping paying, assuming he has the assets to fulfill the judgements against him.

Contrary to stories circulating widely on the internet, Trump has never filed bankruptcy, as I will explain below.

Delaying legal proceedings has always been Trump’s first strategy, taught to him more than a half century ago by the notorious Roy Cohn, a corrupt lawyer and political fixer.

Trump’s second strategy, also taught by Cohn, is to attack anyone who comes after you: federal prosecutors, housing or gambling regulators, journalists or political opponents are all corrupt and illegitimate, Cohn taught Trump to shout.

Trump’s third strategy — never admit even the slightest wrong or mistake no matter how powerful the evidence against you.

The immediate problem facing Trump isn’t the order by Justice Arthur Engoron removing Trump from running the Trump Organization for at least three years while putting in place an independent compliance director. It’s not the ill-gotten gains that the judge says trump must disgorge, $454 billion including interest so far.

The immediate problem is that three weeks from today is the deadline for Trump to appeal the $83.8 million award to E. Jean Carroll.

In a previous DCReport piece, I questioned whether Trump has the capacity to either deposit that much money with the court or to put up about $17 million to obtain a bond that will cover the entire amount should Trump prove unable to do so.

Trump’s first problem is how much cash he actually has. The second, should he seek a bond, is whether any financial institution would be foolish enough to guarantee the full $83.3 million in return for about a fifth of that amount upfront, and a promise by Trump that he will pay if his appeal fails.

Trump has little chance of prevailing on appeal, though he might get modest modifications of the three damage awards. Delaying payment will likely make him even worse off, assuming he actually is worth as much as he claims, a figure that changes from day to hour to minute.

Professor Germain notes that Trump could put his company, the Trump Organization, into bankruptcy, but that would not help him because he is personally liable as the sole owner for the judgments in all three cases.

“It wouldn’t do him any good to get his corporations discharged from bankruptcy because the debts are against Trump personally,” German said.

In bankruptcy proceedings, the responsibility of the trustee and the bankruptcy judge supervising the case is to extract maximum value from the businesses, bank accounts and other assets, known as the estate. The creditors, at the moment Carroll and the state of New York, would have to agree to any combination of asset sales and other actions to satisfy the debts, or press to liquidate the Trump organization.

But there are more civil cases pending against Trump, including those brought by Capitol Police officers who were injured when Trump sent a mob to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In 1990 his lawyers engineered a private equivalent of bankruptcy made possible because New Jersey casino regulators — in violation of their legal duty — took Trump’s side against bankers he owed $3 billion. At the time, Trump boasted that he was worth billions, but the public record showed he was underwater to the tune of almost $300 million. As I wrote in my 1992 casino expose´ Temples of Chance, in 1990 you were probably worth more than Donald Trump.

Later, his publicly traded casino company filed bankruptcy four times while Trump was its president, as he collected at least $83 million in compensation and benefits.

After Trump was, in effect, paid to go away, the casino company went bankrupt two more times before going out of business.

How a Trump personal bankruptcy would fare now can be gleaned from the Alex Jones and Rudy Giuliani filings.

Jones, who grew rich formulating conspiracy theories on his Info Wars internet program, repeatedly charged that the 2012 elementary school massacre was a hoax, and the grieving parents and other relatives were paid actors. The survivors filed a defamation case. A decade later a jury awarded the survivors $1.5 billion. Jones quickly sought refuge in federal bankruptcy court. So far Jones has paid nothing.

In October, a Texas judge ruled that Jones cannot use bankruptcy to avoid paying a $1.5 billion award for defaming the parents and relatives of the Sandy Hook massacre murders. Jones has yet to pay anything.

Similarly, Giuliani repeatedly insisted that two Georgia election workers, a mother and daughter, passed around a USB stick with fake election results despite clear evidence that this was untrue. After a jury awarded $148 million to the victims, who were harassed in their homes and repeatedly threatened with death, Giuliani walked onto the sidewalk outside the courthouse and declared he had spoken the truth about the two women and had done nothing wrong. One of his lawyers says that the once wealthy mayor of New York City is close to broke.

Giuliani is also under criminal indictment in Georgia over the same efforts by Trump and his confederates to steal the 2020 Georgia election.

Reprinted with permission from DC Report.

Accountability Looms For Media Outfits That Spread Lies About 2020 Election

Accountability Looms For Media Outfits That Spread Lies About 2020 Election

A wave of litigation seeking accountability from media purveyors of smears and lies that falsely depicted the 2020 presidential election as "stolen" is percolating in courts around the country -- and heading toward trials or settlements in the near future.

These lawsuits augment the most high-profile investigations and prosecutions seeking accountability from Donald Trump and his White House and campaign aides for seeking to overturn the election’s result.

Indictments are anticipated from the probe conducted by Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, and possibly from the U.S. Department of Justice, whose investigation and prosecution of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is one of the largest in its history. (That said, some DOJ observers expect the first federal indictment of Trump to focus on his removal of government documents to his Florida home.)

While Trump faces 19 pending civil and criminal cases, according to JustSecurity.org, an online analytical forum, there are an additional 10 pending cases at various stages in state and federal courts that are targeting Trump allies in right-wing media and propaganda fronts.

The lawsuits allege the media-based provocateurs smeared election officials, local government workers, ordinary voters, and others by publishing false and defamatory claims about them, or additionally violated their civil rights by deploying illegal and violent tactics.

The suits stand apart from pending litigation by Dominion Voting Systems, one of the nation’s largest voting machinery makers, which is seeking $1.6 billion from Fox News for defaming its computer systems.

Many of these cases are being litigated with the help of ProtectDemocracy.org, “a nonpartisan nonprofit organization formed in late 2016 with an urgent and explicit mission: to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government.”

Protect Democracy’s ongoing lawsuits include:

• A lawsuit against filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, True the Vote, Salem Media, and others involved in the 2020 election conspiracy film, 2000 Mules, for defamation and voter intimidation, on behalf of a Georgia man who was falsely accused of breaking the law in the movie and its related promotional materials.

• A defamation lawsuit against Rudolph Giuliani in federal court brought by two former election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, who testified before the House Select Committee on January 6. In late October, a judge denied Giuliani’s motion to dismiss the case.

• A lawsuit that led to a settlement with One America News Network, known as OAN, for the pro-Trump network’s publication of false reports about the 2020 election. A similar suit in a Missouri court against The Gateway Pundit, another pro-Trump right-wing website, is moving toward discovery and interviews of witnesses under oath.

• A defamation lawsuit against Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, and Richard Hopkins, for spreading the lie after the 2020 election that the postmaster in Erie, Pennsylvania, was illegally backdating ballots at postal facilities. A state court denied motions to dismiss the case.

• A voter intimidation lawsuit in Texas in response to an incident in 2020 where the “Texas Trump Train” – a caravan of Trump-supporting motor vehicles – tried to force a Joe Biden campaign bus off a highway at high speed. Discovery has been proceeding.

These suits are in addition to other litigation involving election denial. Last week in Arizona, in a lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters, a federal judge barred “unlawful voter intimidation” by Trump backers who were staking out ballot drop boxes, carrying guns, wearing body armor, and taking photos and videos of voters, some of whom they followed.

The media-centered lawsuits are part of a spectrum of litigation that seeks to unearth evidence about the broad national conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn 2020’s popular and Electoral College votes.

Notably, AmericanOversight.org, has filed public records requests for communications (e-mails, texts, and phone logs, for example) that have revealed the misconduct of Trump-allied activists, including the discovery of plans by state GOP officials and activists to forge fake Electoral College documents.

While it remains to be seen what will ensue from these lawsuits, they not only suggest that long-awaited legal accountability is looming, but underscore that spreading disinformation is a strategy deeply connected to more direct attempts to undermine election results and seize illegitimate power.

Court-Appointed Attorney To Review Giuliani’s Devices In Criminal Probe

Court-Appointed Attorney To Review Giuliani’s Devices In Criminal Probe

NEW YORK — A court-appointed special master will review the contents of Rudy Giuliani’s electronic devices, against the former mayor’s wishes, a judge ruled Friday. Giuliani, who worked as President Donald Trump’s attorney, asked that the 18 devices seized by the FBI on April 28 be returned so he could review them for attorney-client privilege. Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, whose cell phone was also seized by the feds, joined Giuliani’s long-shot argument. “Giuliani and Toensing contend that their status as lawyers, including Giuliani’s status as a lawyer to the former President, makes ...

Graham Says DOJ Will Probe Bidens, Warns Russia Probers ‘Going To Jail’

Graham Says DOJ Will Probe Bidens, Warns Russia Probers ‘Going To Jail’

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos.

Sen. Lindsey Graham took to the Sunday talk shows to bask in the Senate’s nullification of Donald Trump’s impeachment for using the tools of his power to extort the Ukrainian government into providing him “dirt” on a Democratic election opponent. It is not just Trump who appears to feel unleashed; Graham, too, was eager to describe the next steps of the administration-led descent into American fascism.

A first step: Trump “private lawyer” Rudy Giuliani’s smear campaign against the Bidens is now moving into Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department. Whatever Barr’s prior pretenses may have been, Barr is now explicitly establishing the means by which Rudy’s propaganda can be filtered into official “investigations” of Trump’s targeted enemies.

Throughout the House and press investigations into the Ukraine scandal, Trump Attorney General Barr either refused comment or denied that he was involved with the Giuliani efforts, despite Trump specifically naming both Barr and Giuliani as contacts for the Ukrainian president in the “transcript” of Trump’s now-infamous phone call. Whether this was a lie or not—and it is almost certainly a direct lie by a complicit Barr—such pretenses have now vanished.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Graham said that the Department of Justice is now “receiving information coming out of the Ukraine, from Rudy.” Barr’s Justice Department, says Graham, has “created a process that Rudy could give information and they would see if it’s verified.”

And this, in turn, means the claims of Russian organized crime-tied Dmytro Firtash, seeking to exchange “dirt” on Biden in exchange for the U.S. Department of Justice dropping his indictments in this country, are now being funneled through Giuliani directly into a Barr-led Justice Department that seems more then agreeable to making such a trade.

That was not the only assertion from Graham that Republicans and the Trump administration would be adopting new fascist policies of targeting and retaliating against Dear Leader’s critics and enemies. Just after Trump removed multiple U.S. government officials (and a family member) who testified to the House impeachment committee despite Trump and Barr’s standing orders to refuse House subpoenas, Graham indicated that many of those who investigated Trump will be heading to prison.

“We’re not going to live in a world where as a Republican you get investigated from the day you’re sworn in, three years later they’re still coming after you,” said Graham, erasing both Whitewater and the Benghazi “investigations” from the nation’s history.

“Here’s what amazes me. The Russian investigation, what happened? Half the people behind the Russia investigation are going to go to jail,” the Republican told his Fox News host. “And Trump was cleared.”

This means that the president’s self-identified “personal lawyer”, acting on behalf of known-corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs and ex-officials and in concert with two now-indicted launderers of Russian cash, is now directly channeling conspiracy claims against Trump’s election opponent to the U.S. Attorney General’s office. There is no longer any pretense of Giuliani’s efforts not being state policy.

“When? Hopefully,” host Maria Bartiromo mugged.

“Well, just hang tight,” Graham responded.

We are now well into fascism, and it is the Republican Senate that is not merely looking the other way, but aggressively assisting Trump’s team in its implementation. Those that testified against Trump are being removed, despite laws seemingly barring such retaliation. The propaganda efforts against Trump’s targeted political foe spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani (financed, it should be noted, from Russia, as previous Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was financed for his own role in manipulating Ukraine towards Russian interests while creating schisms between that country and the West) are now being pipelined directly into Barr’s Department of Justice.

Barr, whose department attempted to stifle the Ukrainian whistleblower complaint and worked to sabotage all investigation of Trump, has issued orders that he must be informed of and approve of any new investigations that touch on a 2020 campaign or candidate—both giving him direct access to any information potentially damaging to Trump’s foes while maintaining absolute power to block probes of Trump himself.

It is in this environment that Lindsay Graham, who has been one of the prime advocates of Trump’s new, law-bending authoritarian powers, has confidence that Trump’s prior investigators will be jailed. “Just hang tight,” he tells his propagandizing state media host.