There's No Accounting For the Tasteless

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.) 

 “(I)f he gets away from this, there’s no God, and no reason to live.” -Barbara Res, former Trump Org executive.

I'm not a financial blogger. Hell, I'm lucky if I can balance my checkbook half the time. But I have to ask you- When was the last time you've ever heard of an accounting firm firing one of their clients? Think about how unusual that is. Mazar's worked for Trump, not vice versa. In a way, it's reminiscent of Ackerman McQueen's 2019 decision to part ways with the NRA  after nearly four decades.

     Only, in Trump's case, this defection could cost him heavily.

   The financial experts have long since weighed in on Mazar's Valentine's Day decision to jilt Trump and the zeitgeist is that his current creditors will begin sharpening their knives and calling in their very large notes, which would surely ruin him financially and legally. It could make Trump even more vulnerable than ever by foreign actors seeking leverage on the so-called Republican presidential nominee, especially as Mazar's defection could make his running even more of an inevitability.

    However, three days have gone and we've heard nothing about creditors calling in those notes. They're certainly entitled to their money, especially as Trump personally guaranteed some of those notes (albeit by providing plainly fraudulent financial documents bloating the value of his many properties). But here's the problem with that-

    One major creditor calling in a nine figure note would have the appearance of a run, only from the bank's perspective. It could create a stampede and a logjam in which none of the creditors would get their money, at least not in full. Plus, Trump once sued Deutsche Bank (the first time, not the second) for three billion dollars, which over the years had lent him lots of roubles dollars, when they tried calling in a note. With that ridiculous yet effective legal precedent, many if not all of Trump's lenders fear retaliatory lawsuits that'll tie up whatever assets they pursue for years, most likely beyond Trump's lifetime. 

    But as former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res recently said, Trump getting off scot free would leave some with no reason to live. Mazar's dumping Trump is certainly disastrous and leaves the Trump Organization looking like a rotting carcass on an African savanna. But Trump never seems to run out of lawyers, however clownish they increasingly appear to be, and the very real threat of paralytic litigation could buy a lot of forbearance from the financial sector.

    However, Trump is always his own worst enemy and if anyone is going to torpedo the Trump Organization, it won't be Letitia James or Alvin Bragg or anyone else but Trump himself. In Mazar's very messy Dear John letter to the Trump Organization, they cited as one of their reasons for the breakup the findings of the New York Attorney General's office. Trump, leading with all three of his chins as usual, sallied forth with a four page statement screaming about the divorce while saying it was no big deal and, oh yeah, bragging about his very valuable properties that were actually more valuable than he'd let on in his decade's worth of disclosures.

     

Wait, He Said What?!

That's probably what every lawyer who'd ever worked for Trump said when Trump issued that incredibly bone-headed statement. Number one, it contradicted in no uncertain terms all the arguments his lawyers had begun making for him in Manhattan, point by point, who'd laughably tried to paint Trump and his children as naifs who had no idea of the decades-long criminality in which the Trump Organization was awash despite Trump knowing about signing off on and controlling everything down to office supply expenses.

     Secondly, it also seems to be a signed confession that Trump did indeed undervalue his properties to Mazar's and other lenders to lower his tax burden. And not only did he claim his properties were actually more valuable than he'd let on to his former accountants, he also simultaneously lowered his net worth. In his idiotic email to the press, Trump referred to a June 30, 2014 Statement of Financial Condition that he'd submitted to Mazar's claiming his net worth was $5.8 billion, 

    But when when he threw his jester cap in the ring back in June 2015, he claimed, "I don't like to brag (Narrator: 😆) but I'm really rich!" How rich? Well, that day, he said $8.7 billion. Later, he "adjusted" the figure to $10 billion. And it's that drunken puffer fish behavior that's going to result in Trump or his kids holding the shitty end of the stick.

    As one can expect, when James read Trump's rambling idiocy (with enormous amounts of glee, I'm sure), it catapulted her into a courtroom in which she personally requested the Trump family's testimony from a judge. Short of Hillary Clinton becoming Trump's parole officer, it's hard to see how Trump's week could possibly get worse.

    Because earlier today, Judge Yvonne Williams in Washington DC gave District Attorney Karl Racine permission to demand Allen Weisselberg's testimony in an unrelated matter, the fraud, waste and corruption of the Presidential Inaugural Fund. Apparently, the Trump kids reserved a block of  rooms at the Lowes Madison Hotel and when none of the  guests arrived, they stuck the hotel with the bill. When it went to a collection agency, they simply shrugged off the bill to the nonprofit PIC. So, Trump's week couldn't get any worse.

    Oh, wait, except for the fact that Judge Arthur F. Engoron just ruled today that the Trumps have to testify before James and her investigators and they have three weeks to do so. At this rate, I can't wait to see what the end of the weekday news cycle will bring tomorrow.