The King of the grifters, King Con, found himself in court and it has been a virtuoso display of petulance, bullying, victimhood, obfuscation, deflection, blame the other guy, denial and meandering logic. Although he didn’t have to attend proceedings until called, he elected to sit at his lawyers’ table and defiantly glare at everyone, particularly if there was a camera pointing at him. This is the glare he had stayed up all night practicing for his mugshot on 24 August when he was arraigned on election racketeering charges.
This trial is a civil case of fraud and he had already been found guilty of fraudulently overvaluing his properties. The court is now sitting to determine his sentence
The petulant bully boy is finally getting his comeuppance. He’s not liking it one little bit and we see his churlishness writ large in his rantings. Be it in ALL CAPS on Truth (really) Social or on the steps outside courtrooms, this Orange Jesus plays the victim card and spews falsehoods around like glitter in a sleazy Las Vegas strip joint.
Amongst the numerous court cases that this bombastic shyster is currently defending a civil fraud trial in New York State. He is accused of valuing his properties differently according to whether it was for insurance, bank loan or tax purposes. In typical Trump style, they were extravagantly divergent. They were as fact free as all his speeches and his claim to be a stable genius. Mensa is considering a defamation class action lawsuit on the latter – just kidding.
While not facing jail, he could face a $250 million fine and the loss of his business licences in New York State. The Trump legal dream team, or is it fantasy team, did not oppose the State’s application for a bench trial. With no gallery to play to, the Judge found him guilty before he knew it. All that remains is to determine what is the quantum of the sentence and belatedly, he and his family are testifying in court.
Outside of court, though, he says, that in all his contracts, T & Cs apply and in this case there was a statement effectively saying, in his words, “Don’t believe a word of it.” Unfortunately for him, that’s not a legal defence. Firstly, it is a bit late to trot out this defence after the horse has already bolted from the stable genius. Secondly, a disclaimer of that nature only covers inadvertent or good faith mistakes and not purposeful misstatement of facts.
Even before he testified, he was running a political campaign on the court steps and on social media. He attacked the State Attorney General, the Judge and his clerk, and called the whole process a witch hunt to stop his bid for re-election. The Judge issued a gag order preventing him from attacking his clerk which Trump has ignored twice, costing him $15,000.
But before the main course came along, we first had to hear from Dim Son and Dim Son jnr who riotously testified how little they knew about running a company. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) was all Chinese to Dim Son jnr while Dim Son stated that he was too busy pouring concrete to worry about these pesky details like valuation assessments.
Finally, it was the turn of the sentient naartjie to testily testify for four hours. It didn’t take long for him to get into his freewheeling rhetorical style, attacking the Attorney General (“a political hack”), the judge (biased) and the Democrats (“Trump haters”). Trying to nail him down to answering the questions posed was like playing whack-a-mole.
Trump’s pattern of behaviour strongly suggests that he suffers from arrested development. Meanwhile we hope that one of his many cases regarding his attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election will actually lead to his arrest.