Trump's Art of the Steal

 Popular Economics Weekly

“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.” Author Tony Schwartz

Huffington Post

Tony Schwartz should have named his 1987 Trump biography “The Art of the Steal.” Trump’s main talent has been his ability to steal from others.

Trump’s Republican-engineered shutdown that allowed no Democratic input is his latest theft. Refusing to negotiate the continuing resolution (CR) with Democrats caused the shutdown, which will give Trump an excuse for even more job losses, cost-cutting and closing of government services, as well as essential services for social security, Medicare and Medicaid, while downsizing Obamacare benefits by as much as 70 percent.

It’s becoming obvious that Trump and his Republican accomplices are stealing as much as they can from the American people in his second term.

Americans are paying in a big way. Higher everyday prices to begin with for groceries, energy, and even higher interest rates. The Federal Reserve has been reluctant to lower interest rates until now because of the rising inflation levels due to the rising costs from Trump’s tariffs.

His thievery has been well documented, lately in Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner’s best seller, Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, that documents the con artist he really is.

“Donald Trump came to be imbued with a host of attributes that speak to how we confer status and admiration in modern America. Our awe of celebrity. Our tendency to conflate the trappings of wealth with expertise and ability. Our eagerness to believe people of apparent status will not lie to us. Our inability to distinguish the fruits of hard work from those of sheer luck.”.

It's a sordid tale, because he has stolen from friends and foes alike. So why have Republicans allowed the wholesale stealing, who were once the party of President Nixon that signed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into law?

It is only possible because of the intentional dumbing down of a political party that came to rely on conspiracy theories instead of facts, according to conservative journalist Matt Lewis in his 2016 best-seller, Too Dumb to Fail:

“Somewhere between Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the most recent government shutdown, the conservative movement became neither conservative nor a movement. Hijacked by the divisive and the dumb, it now finds itself hostage to emotions and irrational thinking.”

Why? Because it became the party of the super wealthy that could only maintain power by hiring the “divisive and dumb”, as Trump has done, to run the Republican Party and his government.

Trump’s recommendation of bleach injections and the downplay of mask use to treat the COVID-19 pandemic were an attempt to dumb down his electorate, and many MAGA supporters died because of it.

Author Tony Schwartz attributed Trump’s inability to focus on any subject for more than a few minutes to his short attention span. But the chaos that followed disguised his real intentions; to steal from whomever he is dealing with, such as the students of his faux Trump University, the workers he never paid that built his Atlantic City casinos, multiple bankruptcies, and his own charitable foundation that he milked for his own use.

Why would one political party become so devoid of basic truths that they follow a man who says climate change is a hoax while experiencing more frequent floods, fires, tornadoes and rising sea levels with their own eyes?

How many more jobs will be lost, more natural disasters and pandemics and even recessions will occur, before the Republican Party base realizes they’ve been conned and want to become part of a democratic system again in which all are treated equally under the law and our constitution?

It’s what wannabe dictators do to stay in power, if their electorate will allow it.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

LUCKY LOSER: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.

A new book just out by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Russ Buettner and Suzanne Craig conducts an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House, says the Random House press release.

I first wrote about this in 2016 when Trump first became President: his multiple bankruptcies of the Trump Casinos when other Atlantic City Casinos were successful, Trump University charged as a criminal enterprise (under RICO), and the fact that he had to rely on Russian Oligarchs to finance his real estate empire when U.S. banks would no longer lend to him, are just the tip of the iceberg of business incompetence.

“This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes,” said a review by Washington Post’s Bethany McLean . . . “[Lucky Loser] shows in meticulously documented detail how ‘even when Trump appeared to be at his best, he was failing,’ with massive losses on his core business.

Random House

Buettner and Craig first revealed his real financial condition in a 2016 NYTimes article.

“The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.”

It heightens the absurdity of Republicans allowing Trump’s MAGA movement to take over the Republican Party.

These are the acts of a bully, rather than leader, I said then, which is why he seems to have so much in common with V Putin, Marine Le Pen, and other demagogues. Acting tough can be a plus when dealing with North Korea, or even Russia, but not when dealing with Americans who don’t like him or his very anti-American policies.

Fortune Magazine also reported in 2016 before becoming the Republican candidate for president on candidate Trump’s negotiating tactics: “The legal actions provide clues to the leadership style the billionaire businessman would bring to bear as commander in chief. He sometimes responds to even small disputes with overwhelming legal force. He doesn’t hesitate to deploy his wealth and legal firepower against adversaries with limited resources, such as homeowners. He sometimes refuses to pay real estate brokers, lawyers and other vendors.”

And, “As he campaigns, Trump often touts his skills as a negotiator,” said Fortune. “The analysis shows that lawsuits are one of his primary negotiating tools. He turns to litigation to distance himself from failing projects that relied on the Trump brand to secure investments.

“The authors prove that without his father’s support, Trump would have been nothing,” continues Washington Post’s McLean. “The book also raises a bigger question about the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ ethos of modern America. In a world that conflates the ‘trappings of wealth with expertise and ability,’ where ‘fame, detached from any other marketable talent or skill,’ is ‘a highly compensated vocation,’ does it even matter if you never actually make it?”

This probably tells us best why he was able to take over the Republican Party that has drifted so far from conservative values and was once the environmental party when Republican President Nixon first signed the USEPA into law in 1972.

Republicans had learned to “fake it ‘til you make it”, as was proved by the Trump administrations record in breaking up the USEPA so that Trump’s call to “Drill Baby Drill” for more fossil fuels can continue, and preserving tax cuts first enacted under Trump what will further increase the national debt.

Buettner and Craig’s book will hopefully uncover the truth of Trump’s MAGA policies before it is too late, as most of the modern media has failed to do.

Buettner and Craig’s work exposes how many passes Trump has gotten over the years, how thoroughly he is a creation of the medial that has chased fame over blame, which as the authors write, ‘rarely revisited his claims and afforded credibility to everything he said,” concludes McLean’s review.

And now recognizing more signs of Trump’s mental deterioration as he ages makes it even more important that we in the media tell it like it is.

Harlan Green © 2024

Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

THE ART OF THE SCAM

Popular Economics Weekly

Did you have that queasy feeling; the ‘sick to your stomach’ feeling, when it was announced that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States?  I did. How could someone so obviously unqualified to be president of anything have done it?

It’s becoming more obvious by the day why that happened; why such a man could be elected our President; someone with a sordid business history who blatantly ignores facts, breaks the laws of the land, and ignores our constitution.

That’s because more has just been revealed about the automated Russian cyberattacks that detail how it was done.   These revelations conclude that Donald Trump’s election was a giant scam propagated by the Trump campaign with the aid of Russian intelligence and their propaganda machine.
The latest evidence points to son-in-law Jared Kushner as the main colluder, due to his supervision of the Trump campaign’s digital voter operation. McClatchy News first revealed the link between Kushner and Russia’s cyberwar.

“Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton,” according to McClatchy.

“By Election Day,” reported McClatchy in July, “an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters. Some investigators suspect the Russians targeted voters in swing states, even in key precincts.”

Without Russian aid, Trump could never have vanquished his Republican opponents, as well. These cyberattacks were in play during the primary campaign against Republicans. Throughout the Republican primary elections in early 2016, Russia sent armies of bots carrying pro-Trump messages and deployed human “trolls” to comment in his favor on Internet stories and in social media, former FBI special agent Clint Watts told Congress weeks ago, according to McClatchy.

Perhaps this is why Facebook has finally admitted it sold at least $100,000 in paid advertising to Russian operatives in 2015-16 so that they could gain access to millions of Facebook subscribers.
Donald Trump perfected the Art of the Scam when building his business empire. Perhaps the best example was the Trump University scam—a university in name only—which he was forced to settle for $25 million last November shortly after winning the election. Presiding Judge Gonzalo Curiel had deemed it a criminal organization under RICO, and Trump was scheduled to testify at his trial when he settled with the thousands that  had been scammed, while raking in a reputed $5 million profit from unsuspecting students.

The best evidence that Trump knew he could not become President without Russia’s collusion, are his consequent actions in voicing support for every one of Putin’s policy initiatives—from lifting the Ukraine sanctions, repealing the Sergei Magnitsky Act, and even the breakup of NATO.

He has to be deathly afraid of what Putin could reveal of Trump’s sordid past and details of their collusion. Putin is blackmailing Trump, in a word. McClatchy News has provided the latest evidence of that collusion from confidential sources that the congressional intelligence committees and Special Investigator Robert Mueller are investigating.

So why does the Republican Party continue to support him?

Harlan Green © 2017

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Will Prez-Elect Trump Now Settle His Federal Racketeering Charges?

Popular Economics Weekly

Donald Trump, among his many court battles, has three civil lawsuits that accuse him, his eponymous school, the university’s former president, and an LLC behind the venture of fraud, breach of contract, false advertising and racketeering, a pattern of illegal activity — specifically mail and wire fraud — designed to defraud the public.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the U.S. judge overseeing two of the lawsuits against President-elect Donald Trump and his Trump University told both sides they would be wise to settle the case "given all else that's involved," reports Reuters.

Given that he is now President-elect, some are wondering why he doesn’t settle before the November 28 trial, which would reveal in detail that Trump University was a shell game—literally. It was a university in name only that didn’t confer degrees, for example, and Donald Trump is accused of running a criminal organization under RICO, The Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The latest development from a source familiar with the discussions says the White House-bound mogul’s legal team wants a global settlement that would end all three complaints, including a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, according to the New York Daily News.

But “We are not going to settle this case out cheaply,” Patrick Coughlin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told reporters last Thursday. So Trump’s allegedly fraudulent behavior could seriously damage his pocketbook, as well as he reputation.

The Trump University fraud trials have a 6-year history. Lawyers for the president-elect are squaring off against students who claim they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate investing "secrets" from his "hand-picked" instructors. 

Instead, they were lured into maximizing their credit cards in what was characterized as a classic Bait and Switch scheme. Instead of professional courses in real estate investing that were personally supervised by Donald Trump, they were handed materials copied from other courses, and taught by instructors with no record of success, or any other qualifications.

And Donald Trump walked away with $millions. The underlying civil lawsuit names Trump as a defendant and claims his now-defunct Trump University defrauded students out of $40 million in course fees. The case was first filed in 2010 and covers a class of some 7,600 students in New York, Florida and California–that included veterans, retired police officers and teachers–but Trump personally received approximately $5 million of it, despite his claim, repeated in the Time Magazine interview, “that he started Trump University as a charitable venture.”

So Trump has good reason to fear the lawsuits over Trump University: They put a lie to a central plank of his campaign. The disappointed students suing him argue that Trump is not a wildly successful entrepreneur or a canny dealmaker but rather a fraudster who made promises he couldn't keep, said Time Magazine. The legal proceedings have already revealed the details of the Trump University scam. Thanks to an order from Curiel, they could also reveal a closely guarded secret: Trump's net worth.

Graph: Time Magazine

And now President-elect Trump is asking for Top-Secret clearances for his two sons and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who are being tasked to run his more than 200 business connections. No conflict of interest there? And when President, he will be in a position to appoint the next IRS Director, while his tax returns are being audited.

USA TODAY reports the overall ugly picture of his business practices that emerges goes far beyond Trump’s use of bankruptcy court, where debts can be forgiven or restructured depending on their category and type of federal bankruptcy filing. What’s most provocative about USA Today’s reporting, is how Trump has a longstanding pattern of ignoring his bills and walking away from debts owed contractors and employees.

“At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments and other government filings reviewed by the USA Today Network, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work,” the newspaper wrote recently. “Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.”

It’s almost two weeks before his trial on the RICO charges is scheduled to begin on November 28. Trump probably will attempt to stall it into his Presidency, though Judge Curiel has said he is not inclined to do so. So we will get to see in more detail the sordid portrait of this man that some 60 million have elected to be our next President, or we may not, if he agrees to a settlement before then.
Either way, we hope it provides some justice to the 7,600 plaintiffs—many of whom lost valuable life savings—in chasing his con game.

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Judge Tentatively Denies Dismissal of Trump RICO Charges

Financial FAQs

It looks like Donald A Trump will be on trial under RICO, or The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. A federal judge strongly indicated last Friday he would allow a lawsuit to move forward against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump under RICO by former customers who contend they were defrauded by his defunct real estate program, Trump University, reports Greg Moran, for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel issued a tentative oral ruling from the bench at the start of a hearing in San Diego on a motion to dismiss the case by Trump’s lawyers. The ruling came a day after Trump accepted the GOP nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, said Moran.

RICO is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization, says Wikipedia. The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering, and it allows the leaders of a syndicate (such as a corporation) to be tried for the crimes which they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing, closing a perceived loophole that allowed a person who instructed someone else to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because he did not actually commit the crime personally.

Curiel said that plaintiffs had met the legal requirements to move the case forward and have a jury decide it.  Trump “participated in a scheme to defraud” people who signed up for the seminars, some at a cost of about $35,000.

The complaint, filed in 2013 by former customer Art Cohen, is one of two class-action lawsuits that Trump is facing in San Diego over Trump University before the same judge. Trump also faces a lawsuit in New York.

The lawsuits allege that Trump University gave seminars and classes in hotel ballrooms across the country that were like infomercials, constantly pressuring customers to buy more and, in the end, failing to deliver. Cohen went to a three-day seminar in 2009 in Palo Alto, California, for $1,495 and bought into the "Gold Elite" mentorship program for $34,995.

But that may not be the most serious financial crime Trump is guilty of. He won’t release his tax returns, even though he has said he would in the past. And that means he could be hiding a whole lot of sins.

It’s been well-documented that Donald Trump has a history of promising to release his tax returns — and then not doing so. In 2011, when Trump was spearheading the movement questioning whether President Obama was born in the United States, Trump told ABC News that he would release his tax returns if Obama released his long-form birth certificate. “I’d love to give my tax returns,” he said, in the ABC interview.

But once Obama released his birth certificate, Trump hedged. “At the appropriate time I’m going to do it,” he said. The appropriate time never came.

Then, in 2012, Trump criticized Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for being slow to release his tax returns. Trump was asked by Fox News whether he’d ever have a problem releasing his returns.

“No,” he said. “I actually think that it’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful, and that you’ve made a lot of money, that you’ve employed a lot of people. I actually think that it’s a positive.” But again, he refused.

This is even though such Republican luminaries as former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has criticized Donald Trump for failing to disclose back taxes, repeatedly suggesting that the billionaire’s financial records may contain “a bombshell” that could damage his White House bid.

“I think we have good reason to believe that there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes. I think there is something there,” Romney said on Fox News’ “Your World” with Neil Cavuto. “The reason I think there is a bombshell in there is because every time he is asked about his taxes, he dodges and delays.”

What could he be hiding? The first thing the public would find is Trump's tax rate. The candidate has bragged about paying a very low tax rate and taking advantage of the complex US tax code with its many loopholes. This is what Romney’s tax returns revealed—that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.


Then there is the much-publicized claim that he has a net worth of “billions”, even ten billion, he has claimed most recently.  This would be hard to ascertain from tax returns alone, as they report income rather than assets. Tax expert David Cay Johnston has uncovered past audits of Donald Trump from the 1980s and 90s that show no income at all, but lots of undocumented expenses.

In fact, Trump’s taxes may have been fraudulently filed, in some cases.  When shown a photocopy of Trump’s 1984 tax return during an appeal, Jack Mitnick, Trump’s accountant for more than 20 years, testified that “we did not” prepare that return, referring to himself and his firm, and he said did not know who did. However, Mitnick did not dispute that it was his signature on the photocopy.

The original tax return was never found, the judge noted.  “Among the issues raised by Mitnick’s 1992 testimony is whether Trump or someone acting on his behalf substituted a return that he or someone else prepared and then transferred Mitnick’s signature using a photocopier,” said Johnston.

So the fact that Trump is worth "billions" would be hard to ascertain from tax returns alone.  But his repeated promises to release his taxes, and then refusing to do so, should be a red flag to voters. What is he hiding that he is willing to break the precedent of every President since Richard Nixon to release their taxes and that will further damage his reputation for truthfulness?

We should know within days what Judge Curiel’s verdict will be on Trump’s RICO indictment. It doesn’t look good, needless to say, as he could be convicted of a felony, which would be grounds for impeachment should he be elected President.

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Is the Real Donald Trump?

Popular Economics Weekly

It certainly behooves US voters to know the real Donald Trump. Tony Schwartz, ghost writer for Trump’s best-selling “Art of the Deal” has just come forward after 30 years with a ‘tell all’ New Yorker interview based on the 18 months he spent with Trump when writing the book.

The public already knew that Trump has sued and been sued thousands of times in court over his business practices, declared bankruptcy 4 times (plus 2 more BKs by investors left with the casino’s assets), and been indicted on RICO charges in a San Diego court over Trump University.

His supporters maintain his racist, wall building, anti-abortion, Putin-loving, anti-trade remarks aren’t the real Trump. He is really a loving and lovable family man, who supports his friends and treats his employees fairly, whatever their ethnicity.

But Schwartz maintains there is no real Trump. He is whoever you want or would like him to be, and totally focused on making deals that benefit him. It can be either sad, or terrifying.

“Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood,” Schwartz told Jane Mayer, author of the New Yorker article. “It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then. . . .If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time,” said Schwartz.

“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

There is more to come on the real Trump. A hearing this Friday is scheduled in Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s San Diego courtroom on whether to dismiss RICO charges in the Cohen vs. Trump class action lawsuit that says Trump intentionally defrauded hundreds of students who enrolled in Trump University.

The case contends that Trump University amounted to civil racketeering, a fraud that lured customers into spending thousands of dollars by making false promises that they would learn the businessman’s secrets, taught by his hand-picked instructors—which is why the case is being made under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.

However, it isn't very likely that Judge Curiel will honor Trump’s request to dismiss the very damaging RICO charges. That’s because, in the words of the plaintiff’s attorneys, representing those defrauded by Trump University, "Trump denies operating and managing the 'fraudulent marketing scheme' alleged here because he only starred in the marketing materials; signed the marketing materials; corrected the marketing materials; and approved the marketing materials. And therefore, he deserves summary judgment. Because he did not operate and manage the Trump University 'fraudulent marketing scheme.' He only starred in the marketing materials. Signed them. Corrected them. And approved them.”

If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”

Presidential candidate Trump might not want the public to know the real Trump, even if there is such a person. That’s because he has branded himself as the ‘best of the best’. He has attempted to enshrine his name—and therefore himself—as synonymous with success, when the facts under increasing scrutiny seem to be just the opposite.

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Trump Must Hate the Little Guy

Financial FAQs

The Republican Party may rue the day they didn’t vet their presumptive candidate for President. The vetting can no longer just be about his overt and premeditated racism, or even his xenophobic wall building. His business practices are finally coming under detailed scrutiny, and what we see is very ugly.

A USA TODAY article catalogues more than 3,500 lawsuits filed for or against Donald Trump over his business career. Many were filed by small business people and firms that Trump refused to pay for work done on his various real estate properties.

The result was that many were driven out of business. It looks like Trump’s main business model was and continues to be preying on those who are least able to defend themselves legally, in order to enrich himself. This smacks of more than predatory business practices.

David Brooks’ latest New York Times Oped this tries to put a handle on his narcissistic behavior. “By one theory, narcissism flows from a developmental disorder called Alexithymia, the inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. Sufferers have no inner voice to understand their own feelings and reflect honestly on their own actions.”

Could this also be defined as sociopathic behavior, since he seems to have no compunction in harming others financially, especially those least able to defend themselves in court?

Psychology Today defines sociopathy as follows; “A sociopath can be defined as a person who has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This disorder is characterized by a disregard for the feelings of others, a lack of remorse or shame, manipulative behavior, unchecked egocentricity, and the ability to lie in order to achieve one's goals.”

Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will "protect your job." But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friel family, who says Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.

The Friel’s family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.

Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.

Graph: USA Today

This is not to speak of a Florida lawsuit against Trump and his Trump's Doral golf resort--also embroiled in recent non-payment claims by two different paint firms, with one case settled and the other pending, says USA TODAY. Last month, his company’s refusal to pay one Florida painter more than $30,000 for work at Doral led the Miami Dade Circuit Judge Jorge Cueto (whoops, another Hispanic Judge) to order foreclosure of the resort if the contractor isn’t paid.

Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, in South Florida, has been waiting more than two years to get paid for his work at the Doral. The Paint Spot first filed a lien against Trump’s course, then filed a lawsuit asking a Florida judge to intervene.

“In courtroom testimony, the manager of the general contractor for the Doral renovation admitted that a decision was made not to pay The Paint Spot because Trump “already paid enough,” said USA TODAY. As the construction manager spoke, “Trump’s trial attorneys visibly winced, began breathing heavily, and attempted to make eye contact” with the witness, the judge noted in his ruling.”

It looks like Trump’s attorneys and supporters will continue to wince as more stories of his business practices come out—whatever his personality disorder. Republicans should have definitely vetted him, instead of listening to his hype.

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Trump RICO Trial Date Set

Popular Economics Weekly

Trump says he will be the first candidate since 1976 not to release tax returns. Analysts said that Trump likely pushed the envelope to turn ordinary income into capital gains, and deferred the payment of tax through like-kind exchanges, said the MarketWatch report. The tax returns could also verify how much income he receives from licensing his name.

In fact, they could show much more—for instance, how much of his fortune was made from defrauding other investors. Trump’s sordid business dealings are known to very few, as I’ve said in past columns. And now Donald Trump will go to trial in a class-action lawsuit against him and his now-defunct Trump University that includes the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO charges, after the presidential election but before the inauguration, setting the stage for a president-elect to take the witness stand if he wins the White House.

One of his 4 Chapter 11 (business) bankruptcies was for Trump Casinos and Hotels. “For 10 years between 1995 and 2005, Donald Trump ran Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts — and he did it so badly and incompetently that it collapsed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” said Marketwatch’s Brett Arends, who has been tracking his business failures for years. “His stockholders were almost entirely wiped out, losing a staggering 89 percent of their money. The company actually lost money every single year. In total it racked up more than $600 million in net losses over that period,” something no other major casino chain did over that term.

 

Graph: MarketWatch

In total, Donald Trump pocketed $32 million in nine years of running Trump Casinos and Hotels, while his public stockholders lost more than $100 million. But much more damaging are the various class action lawsuits filed again Trump and Trump University, which was a university in name only.

Instead of receiving a quality degree, “as good as any from a university”, said Trump, students received a printed certificate and no degree after spending as much as $36,000 on a weekend course that solicited more money, and were given commonly known real estate websites, such as Zillow, and several worthless property referrals.

These are the words of several plaintiffs suing Trump that a San Diego court has elevated to gangster status. Trump is accused of not only fraud, but racketeering, as if he were running a criminal enterprise.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel on Friday scheduled trial for Nov. 28 in the suit that alleges people who paid up to $35,000 for real estate seminars got defrauded. The likely Republican nominee planned to attend most, if not all, of the trial and would testify, Trump attorney Daniel Petrocelli said.

“This means that, fairly or unfairly, opponents will be able to say that a large group of everyman voters, many of them elderly, have accused a leading contender for the Oval Office of being a racketeer,” said Time Magazine’s Steven Brill, who has been following the progress of this lawsuit, initiated more than five years ago.

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Can Trump Trump's Ambition?

Thomas Friedman seems to believe the Donald has almost sewed up a majority of the Republican Primary delegates and will be a formidable foe for Hillary, assuming she is the Democrat’s candidate.  But chances are his past will catch up with him as voters begin to think with their head rather than gut instinct that Friedman seems to believe motivates many voters.

“Donald Trump is a walking political science course,” said Friedman in a NYTimes Op-ed. “His meteoric rise is lesson No. 1 on leadership: Most voters do not listen through their ears. They listen through their stomachs. If a leader can connect with them on a gut level, their response is: “Don’t bother me with the details. I trust your instincts.” If a leader can’t connect on a gut level, he or she can’t show them enough particulars. They’ll just keep asking, “Can you show me the details one more time?”

That may be so for many Republican primary voters, but Trump’s suspect past hasn’t yet been investigated.  Thinking Repubs have given him a blank check to date, believing that he will flame out of his own accord.

Even Mitt Romney calling him a con artist last week didn’t seem to hurt Trump in Michigan, though Ohio Governor John Kasich was creeping closer in the final tally of delegate votes, in a defacto tie for second place with Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Graph: Marketwatch

           

Trump’s sordid business dealings are known to very few.  One of his 4 Chapter 11 (business) bankruptcies was for Trump Casinos and Hotels. “For 10 years between 1995 and 2005, Donald Trump ran Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts — and he did it so badly and incompetently that it collapsed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” said Marketwatch’s Brett Arends, who has been tracking his business failures for years. “His stockholders were almost entirely wiped out, losing a staggering 89 percent of their money. The company actually lost money every single year. In total it racked up more than $600 million in net losses over that period,” something no other  major casino chain did over that term.

In total, Donald Trump pocketed $32 million in nine years of running Trump Casinos and Hotels, while his public stockholders lost more than $100 million.  But much more damaging are the various class action lawsuits filed again Trump and Trump University, which was a university in name only.

Instead of receiving a quality degree, “as good as any from a university”, said Trump, students received a printed certificate and no degree after spending as much as $36,000 on a weekend course that solicited more money, and were given commonly known real estate websites, such as Zillow, and several worthless property referrals.

These are the words of several plaintiffs suing Trump that a San Diego court has elevated to gangster status.  Trump is accused of not only fraud, but racketeering, as if he were running a criminal enterprise. 

One of the two San Diego cases has been allowed by the judge to be brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, said Time Magazine’s Steven Brill. “This means that, fairly or unfairly, opponents will be able to say that a large group of everyman voters, many of them elderly, have accused a leading contender for the Oval Office of being a racketeer.”

The records indicate, for example, that Trump University collected approximately $40 million from its students–who included veterans, retired police officers and teachers–and that Trump personally received approximately $5 million of it, despite his claim, repeated in our interview, that he started Trump University as a charitable venture.

Trump’s own followers may be able to disbelieve the evidence that is being unearthed of his many business failures in a hyper fervid primary season full of hyperbole.  But the facts are only now now coming to light. And the picture is revealing. 

The evidence is in plain sight.  The Donald always comes first, and very few others have profited thereby. 

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen