TRUMP, TRUMP AND MORE TRUMP

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At last, we have a readable, comprehensive (albeit stomach-turning) survey of how Donald Trump used litigation, and threats of litigation, as the engine to drive his rise to power. The book, Plaintiff in Chief, will be published later this month, authored by James  E. Zirin, an accomplished author and former federal prosecutor. The subtitle, "A portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 lawsuits" (here Zirin may be behind the times -- I have read that the current number exceeds 4,000) refers to the excessive litigiousness Trump learned from his disbarred lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn is gone but Trump still vaunts his methods.

Zirin takes us on a grand tour of Trump's misuse of the judicial system. Our President has sued people, companies, cities, towns, and even a country.(Scotland). He almost always loses, but has used his wealth as a billy-club to bludgeon his adversaries with outlandish and exaggerated claims, with the result that many choose to throw in the towel. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Trump has brought his lies, exaggerations, and unscrupulous tactics to the White House.

The author discusses in some detail the more outrageous of Trump's legal misadventures, including his suit against the federal government when the FHA found that he was discriminating against black people in his Queens apartment houses. When Trump made the big step-up into Manhattan, with a plan to renovate the old Commodore Hotel, he persuaded the wealthy Pritzker family to put up the entire $400 million cost, in cash. Once the project was complete, he showed his appreciation by suing them for RICO -- the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization statute Congress designed principally to control the mob! Trump appears to display a weakness for making RICO claims -- ironic given Zirin's section in the book listing all the connections between Trump and the mob.

(Trump once made a RICO claim against clients of mine. While his claim against the Pritzkers was settled, we got his suit against my clients dismissed on the merits, and Trump was required to pay my clients' legal fees.)

Zirin also takes us through another extraordinary bite-the-hand-feeds-you Trump maneuver, arising out of his borrowing 300 million dollars from Deutche Bank. When he defaulted on the loan, Trump sued the bank for lending him the money!

Zirin's survey of this President litigation, past, present, and potential, covers a lot of ground. No aspect is ignored. There are sections regarding sexual allegations past and present, Atlantic City bankruptcies, the massive Trump University fraud, Trump's potential criminal claims arising out of the facts found by the Mueller team,  the Emoluments Clause claims, fraudulent tax returns, Trump Foundation fraud, and more. In plain English, Zirin discusses the legal effects of all of this upon possible application of the Impeachment Clause, the potential criminal prosecution of Trump when he departs White House, and even a readable and intelligent discussion of Trump's claimed ability to pardon himself.

Oh yeah, aside from the litigation aspects of Trump's career,  the quote I liked best from this book was Trump's description of his own style:­­­­­­­

"Glitz works in Atlantic City ... I sometimes use flash, which is a level below glitz."

You're going to like this book.

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Okay, before I go, I cannot resist reporting on a colloquy from last night's PBS Newshour. The subject was Trump's visit as Consoler-in-Chief to mourners and the injured in the El Paso massacre. Trump's reaction synchs with the foregoing:

Announcer: There was a cell phone video that emerged after the [hospital] visit. It showed the president on the ground in El Paso talking about his crowd size at a rally back in February and comparing it to Beto O'Rourke's.

Take a quick listen to what he said.

·       Donald Trump:

That was some crowd.

And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot. They said his crowd was wonderful.

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David Brooks: Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit where he's with the orphan baby [two-months old, parents killed in the shooting] and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And Trump's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, the Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?

And I look at that photo, I think, well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone who is unloved and made himself unlovable and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn't do the consoler in chief just because he doesn't do that emotional range.

And that's a burden and a cost for any of us.

Is it ever.

A bientot.

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com

Additional details of the Trump RICO suit against my clients may be gleaned from my memoir, The Client Decides,

published in 2017.