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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the details of Letisha James's case in New York against Donald Trump, plus more details have come out about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's potentially illegal scheme to ship migrants to Martha's Vineyard.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Mugrake Podcast.
I'm Jared J. Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Hausman.
Nick, I am starting this episode off bringing glad tidings of autumnal weather.
I am blissed out.
I'm wearing slippers.
I'm planning my flannels.
I'm ready to go, Nick.
It must be nice.
Much nice to have that.
I do not have such said Do you miss it, or have you just so California'd out that it's just not even in your mind?
I miss it, but isn't there like a built-in sort of melancholy around that time when you see the beautiful trees?
I don't know, there's something about it that's bittersweet to me.
Yes, that's the whole point!
It's the whole range of human experience.
Oh, I just prefer to just be happy all the time, Jared.
I don't know what to say about that.
Thank you for tuning in.
We got so much to talk about.
We've got Trump being charged with a legacy of fraud.
We've got a governor in Florida.
I don't even know how to get into this story.
We've got Vladimir Putin blackmailing the world with nuclear weapons.
And, by the way, we have a double-barreled shotgun of QAnon stories that have to be heard to be believed.
A reminder, if you want to hear the whole show, go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast But first, Nick, let's get everybody up to speed.
A story that we need to talk about, we need to dive into, talk about the ins and the outs here.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has been tracking Donald Trump for a while now, this is something that people have sort of kept an eye on, announced that the state of New York is bringing a lawsuit against Trump and the Trump organization.
For what she calls staggering fraud, which includes overvaluing or lying about their wealth and assets in order to leverage that wealth and assets into beneficial loans and programs.
First things first, Nick, what are your thoughts about this?
What are your initial reactions?
Um, you know, we know this.
We've seen this.
New York Times did the whole thing about his taxes and how he cheats on his taxes.
This is like, um, you know, the college scandal.
Like, we always knew people would buy a wing for their kid to get into school.
We always knew that he would, you know, inflate his values and everything, or then deflate it depending on who he's talking to.
This is old news.
This was reported too.
I suppose what's interesting is that there's a staggering amount of detail in what they've uncovered and the actual numbers.
And at the very least, when it's a civil case, that will have weight.
People will actually be able to understand that and decide if it's illegal or not.
So James has already said, first of all, that they have discovered more than 200 fabrications, like over 200 lies, which just on its own sort of merits is it's almost impressive.
It's a baker's dozen, Jared.
It's really, really impressive.
On this note, like this lawsuit is pushing to keep Trump and his progeny from ever involving themselves in business in New York again.
They have gone ahead and provided their findings to federal authorities.
So there might be something comes from that.
But I, Nick, what you just said, I think is really important.
And I had said this to you when it broke.
I think what's really fascinating here is how this is a very, very large thing.
Like, let's not discount it.
Like, this is actual legal jeopardy for Trump.
But also, it's bizarre how Absolutely fraudulent he is, and how flagrantly fraudulent he is, that something of this magnitude could happen.
And now in 2022 AD, the year of our Lord, we look at this and we're like, okay, we all knew this.
Like, what are we supposed to do with it?
This state just charged a former president of the United States of America with massive amounts of fraud.
It's kind of staggering, to borrow a word from Letitia James, It's kind of staggering that this is where we're at.
You know what I mean?
I think there's a lot of real estate developers in New York who are not sleeping well right now because they're like, oh, you know, we do that all the time.
All the time.
And that's what the right will use to sort of defend this.
This is how you do business.
Depreciation, yada yada.
That is, well, while that might be true, the inherent threat of being prosecuted, knowing that what you're doing is wrong, is always there, and if you're the unlucky son of a bitch that gets caught with it, you are going to be penalized, and you know that.
That is the cost of doing business, and here we are.
Like, this is where he's at, and he was exposed, and again, we don't necessarily live in a country, Jared, I don't know if this is breaking news, where people really kind of follow the law as much, Right?
Like, this doesn't happen a lot, especially on the white-collar side.
So, you know, this is the thing.
People have been getting into this business for decades and decades to do these things, to manipulate these numbers.
Like, that's why they're in there to make the money that they can make.
But again, if you get caught, you have to be able to accept that that's going to happen.
And the right won't do that, by the way.
Well, no.
And that's the thing.
There's something I've been sort of walking around with this and having this rattle around in my head, almost like a ball bearing in like a spray paint can.
Like, yes, this is actually, and listen, Trump, as in all things, takes this all the way.
You know what I mean?
Like some people might have conspicuous consumption.
Trump's like, oh, I can now do that by a hundred, right?
This is, again, flagrant and huge in terms of like the amount of lying and criming that's here.
But Nick, something that I can't get over is that most of the people who do this, and this is sort of part and parcel of not only being in real estate in New York, but mostly being in all of these sort of industries around the country.
America is built on grifting, straight up.
That is one of the major, actual, true principles of America, is always be grifting.
Nick, I don't think that this lawsuit, and I don't think the legal jeopardy that Trump is facing, I don't think any of this would happen if he had never run for president of the United States of America.
And it's one of those things where you kind of look at him, and I've said this before, Trump is Shakespearean.
He really is.
There's something really compelling about this figure.
He could have.
His entire life, not flown under the radar, because of course, he was a peacock.
You got to let him fly.
Like this was a guy who wanted to go out and like, you know, show his stuff in public and get this adoration and attention.
But it's the fact that he couldn't help himself.
He didn't even want to be president of the United States of America.
He wanted the attention and the money and possibly the media empire that would happen.
The forces that were taking place in the United States propelled him Along with our media and also, I don't know, foreign actors who we'll talk about later, propelled him into the office.
And then, Nick, it wasn't enough to win.
He had to go up for re-election.
He couldn't accept the defeat.
If he simply would have went away, I don't know if we would even be talking about this.
I don't know if this lawsuit would have been brought up.
This is literally a person who compulsively, not only compulsively lied and compulsively committed crimes, This is a person who destroyed himself.
Like, literally.
The reason why all of this is happening is because he couldn't help himself, and on top of that, as we've talked about, the system doesn't want him around anymore.
Like, he has served his purpose, they're ready to be done with him, they need him to get out of the spotlight, and it is just, it's really hard to wrap your head around that, like, how large and weird and uniquely American all of this is.
You know, it's weird when you have like sort of thoughts that are deep, dark in your brain and then someone else says them almost word for word.
Maybe we don't need to do this podcast anymore because now we've achieved this, whatever that is, because that's exactly what I've been thinking about.
It's intimacy, Nick.
That's what we've achieved.
The idea that like if he just hadn't run for president yes he never would get the scrutiny but you know if we're talking about why he did it it's we got to give a big thanks Obama a big fat thanks Obama for that one right because if he had just hadn't you know is exhoriated that's the word I'm looking for right uh him at the uh publicly humiliated yeah but also I mean like this wouldn't have happened if Fox News Like, if Fox News hadn't said, you know what, it's really nice to have this absolute, you know, buffoon come on and talk.
Like, it seems like our viewers really enjoy this.
Right.
Well, although I thought we were going to say, oh, I guess we're not symbiotic yet, but we're getting there.
I thought you were going to say, if Fox hadn't just, you know, wanted to promote the fact that, you know, Obama wasn't born in this country.
Right.
And it wouldn't have happened if NBC didn't want to profit on this entire, like, fabrication of the Trump Organization and Donald Trump as a billionaire and all this stuff.
Like, this is a person, really, and Donald Trump in a way is sort of a Forrest Gump-type figure, to be honest, who has just sort of been in the American consciousness for not just decades, but it seems like since he was born, just sort of moving on the backs of all these political and economic and societal trends, and it's brought us here.
And again, I just want to point out, I do not think that the state of New York would be going after him like this if he wasn't who he is now.
It just wouldn't have happened.
Without question.
And that's what happens when you get into the spotlight for any kind of thing.
You get more scrutiny.
There's a contract, right?
You sign.
I will now be subject to any kind of investigation from anybody.
And smearing my name, whatever.
That's what you're signing up for.
I think it's worth maybe just pulling apart a little bit about what the scheme is or what he was doing.
Because it's two parts.
I mean, obviously what's going to sell in a court of law, we're talking about his quote-unquote peers, would be that, you know, all the money that the taxes did not collect on him because he was lowering the values of all his properties.
And that's certainly something that'll, you know, why does he get to pay hardly any taxes ever and I have to pay him all my hard-earned money?
The other part, though, which is probably the worst part, is that he could inflate the values in order to borrow more money against those assets.
Now, he's going to throw this on the accountants, even though they already came out and said, we just file paper.
We just move paper around.
I want to be an accountant, Jared.
I'm in the wrong business.
I got to tell you, Nick, and I don't know if you're like me, and this is like a truly sicko shit.
One of my favorite quiet jokes that is in current American politics, Is every article that goes into Trump's business dealings and legal problems, there's always these new little tight snippets and they're like nine or ten paragraphs into all of these articles.
And it's like, and then he moved on to a new accountant and the new accountant has been said, holy God, I have nothing to do with this after they've helped to file this stuff.
Like it is just this hot potato of like absolutely toxic assets.
It's incredible.
Well, my favorites when they, when they're like the two or three pages got released, probably by Ivana, who then maybe got killed for it later.
I don't know.
Uh, they found the accountant in Florida, the retired dude who was like, Yeah, I filed those 15 years ago.
Sure, those are right.
Like, you know, I love that guy.
Like, he didn't give a fuck or anything anymore.
But yeah, that's what you do.
And by the way, this is what, you know, he's gonna be able to put it in the banks.
Well, it's the bank's job to have to verify that.
I could just put whatever I want and, you know, what's the big deal?
And by the way, he might get away with that.
He might be able to pin it on the banks.
And by the way, There were a lot of banks that were clamoring for his business in the last several years, right?
A lot of them.
He could go to any bank he ever wanted to at this point, right?
Is that right, Jared?
It's actually really impressive how many of these banks, because every time, again, a story like this bobs up to the surface, you know, like a mob-dumped body.
Like, all these banks are like, we would never engage in this and we are horrified.
Absolutely horrifying.
It's like, no, that's your business.
Oh, wait, I'm sorry.
I just heard somebody in the other place that has a stack of money that is just drenched in blood.
We need to go ahead and put this into circulation and get it done.
It's incredible.
It really is.
You know by the way like you know the real key here would be because the bank should be the one prosecuting him for fraud because they're the ones but some of the banks probably ended up getting out having doing okay with their deals he he did pay some of those loans back there is always interest there like they that and then there's new future business and a lot of the banking is done on like volume right they just need to keep churning out deals
So, uh, but the banks that got screwed, those are the ones who you could probably find who will be stand up and want to actually be part of this as well and stand up for their rights because a lot of like, you know, he sued one bank, uh, you know, for after defaulting on his loan, he sued them for defaulting on his loan and try to say it was, you know, an act of God, uh, that did this, whatever it was.
And, uh, Oh, I think, yeah, he tried to claim that the 2008 housing crisis was an act of God.
And, you know, he's left, in his wake, and that's what's really the crime here, is that in his wake he's left people destitute and without any money and completely fucked with, you know, all the resources they put into these deals and they get nothing back and they're stuck with the debt.
It's actually really impressive, the symbiosis or sort of the comparing and contrasting of how he has handled this, because we talked about this a while back.
There was this moment a couple of years ago where Trump, completely out of nowhere, as president, was like, New York City's terrible.
No one wants to live there anymore.
I'm moving to Florida.
Right?
And he basically said, I am now a Floridian.
And then all of a sudden you turn on Fox News and it's like everybody from Sean Hannity, all these sycophants were like, I hate New York as they're in New York.
And they're all talking about how they're going to leave New York.
And it's an absolute cesspool.
Nick, this is the equivalent.
Of like a con man hanging paper and, you know, trying to float checks and like moving from like one dusty, disgusting hotel to another just one step ahead of the law.
It just so happens because of the tiered class structure in the United States.
Like Trump is like going and hanging out at his Mar-a-Lago resort, which for people keeping track at home, he claimed was worth 750 million dollars.
That's three quarters Of a billion dollars.
Actually, it looks like it's closer to 75 million.
And even I think that's even inflated.
Yeah, and let's not forget he's already violating the law in Florida for living there full-time, which he's not supposed to be able to do.
So, you know, now let's talk about Letitia James for a second because I do want to criticize her.
She ran her campaign to win this role as a state AG, you know, by kind of saying she was going to do this.
That's a bit problematic.
It does reek of a political retribution to some degree.
She probably did the study.
She realized that he's very unpopular in New York and that's what's going to get her votes.
But I don't know.
I think that's a bit of a problem.
What do you think?
So part of the issue in all of this is, how do you hold Donald Trump accountable as a politician or an agent of the law, right?
I'm like you.
I do not really like the idea of people going out and campaigning on, I will prosecute someone.
This is, again, what we were critical of whenever Donald Trump was going out and saying that he was going to make sure the DOJ locked Hillary Clinton up.
Not great.
That's not a really good thing.
You can, as a prosecutor, as an attorney, say, I'm going to cut down on crime.
You probably don't need to focus on anyone, unless their name's Al Capone.
I don't know.
But I will say, the fallout from all of this, and by the way, we heard from a friend of the pod, Bill Barr, who went on Fox News, in case you had any doubts about where he was in all of this, and in this probe, of the Trump Organization, which is a family business because it is organized crime.
Like, we are involving Eric, Don Jr., Ivanka.
Here's Bill Barr and we'll talk about it. - I'm not even sure she has a good case against Trump himself, but what ultimately persuades me that this is a political hit job is she grossly overreaches when she tries to drag the children into this.
Yes, they had roles in the business, but this was his personal financial statement.
It was prepared by the CFO.
accounting firms were involved in it.
The children aren't going to know the details of that, nor are they expected in the real world to do their own due diligence and have it reviewed independently.
And so this, to me, looks like gross overreach, which I think is going to end up backfiring on them because I think it will make people sympathetic for Trump, that this is another example of people piling on because of Trump derangement syndrome, this strong desire to punish that this is another example of people piling on because of And you've been listening to a free preview of our Patreon-exclusive Weekender Show.
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