A New York appeals court has thrown out a massive civil fraud penalty against President Trump, a total that exceeded half $1 billion. They're calling that penalty excessive. This ruling by the appeals court is monumental. It was also very unusual in that it took them nearly a year to reach this decision. [00:00:16] This is a huge win for Donald Trump. Any way you cut it. And this is a stinging rebuke to the attorney general, Letitia James. Well, President Donald Trump is saving a pretty penny thanks to a New York appeals court essentially deciding to [00:00:33] throw out the massive $515 million penalty against him in that civil fraud case. Now, in that case, in case you have forgotten about it, which was brought by Letitia James, the judge found that Trump had engaged in fraud by essentially [00:00:50] exaggerating his wealth for decades and by exaggerating his wealth, he had committed fraud in order to get better terms for both loans and for insurance. Now, after being found liable. Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million [00:01:11] in penalties with interest. The sum has topped $515 million. Additionally, penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump's sons Eric and Donald Junior, bring the total to $527 million with interest. [00:01:30] So Trump was able to actually hold off on the collection of that money during the appeals process and while posting $175 million bond. Now fast forward to today. And here's ABC's Aaron Katersky explaining the panel's ruling. [00:01:51] The judges are not in agreement here, but it appears they have found that after a three month trial, the judge. This was a bench trial. The judge, Arthur Engoron, correctly found that Trump, his eldest sons and his business perpetrated a decade's worth [00:02:09] of business fraud by hyping the value of Trump's assets to include his apartment in Trump Tower. They said it was tripled its actual square footage. The value of Mar a Lago, his Florida golf club. They valued it, thinking it was an unrestricted waterfront property in Palm [00:02:27] Beach when there are heavy restrictions on on its development. But they said the penalty that Engoron imposed for all of this fraud of $464 million violated the the Eighth Amendment. It was excessive. [00:02:42] And so they've thrown out the monetary judgment and may be left to New York's highest court to determine what the ultimate penalty, if any, should be. So we're going to get to some of the disagreement among the judges [00:02:59] through this appeals process. But just to give you a few more details, essentially, in this prevailing opinion, they maintained the fraud judgment against Trump. The judges wrote that while the injunctive relief injunctive relief ordered [00:03:14] by the court is well crafted to curb defendant's business culture, the court's disgorgement order, which directs the that defendants pay nearly half $1 billion to the state of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment [00:03:29] of the United States Constitution. Genk. As someone who has a fancy law degree from Columbia University. Number one, what does disgorgement mean? And number two, what are your thoughts on this decision? Well, I do think it's a fancy pants person, I will explain. [00:03:44] All right. So, what basically what they're saying is they brought down the penalty to zero. But, Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump junior can't serve as executives for a couple of years, whatever the hell that means, because they cheat on that anyway. [00:04:00] They just tell the guy who who is the figurehead Trump Organization, do this, do that. What are they? What are you going to do? Sue them? Bring them to trial? No. So this means. So guys, that's the part that makes sense to me in the ruling is it was always a very big number. [00:04:15] It was a giant number. So if they said, hey, that's excessive I get it. Okay. But now the number is zero. - What? - All or nothing. Baby, that that doesn't make any sense because they're saying he is guilty. [00:04:32] He's definitely guilty. Right. But then how could the number be zero? So. Okay, so that's just perplexing. So look, when you look at the actual case itself, we discussed this obviously as the case was happening, but, number one, [00:04:48] if stuff like this is around the edges, you know, oh, he valued his property at 15% more than he should have. But, you know, that's debatable, because if you look at it this way or you look at it that way, nobody's going to trial over that, right? [00:05:03] Let alone getting convicted, let alone 300 and some odd million in the beginning. 500 million by the end. Right. But Trump, of course, is always is extraordinary. So, as you heard partially there in that video, sometimes he'd say three times the amount of a property because he's thinking, who cares? [00:05:22] I've been lying my whole life on all of these forms. I'm going to keep on lying, and I'm going to treat everybody as a sucker. Now, if you say, well, yeah, but he eventually paid those loans back, which is actually near miraculous because he almost never does. Okay. But he did in this case. And no one sued him civilly. ET cetera. [00:05:39] So there was no harm. That's not true. Because if you have higher leverage and you go and and collateral, your interest rate's going to be lower. So you're going to save millions of dollars from that deal that otherwise should have gone to a creditor, right? [00:05:56] So there's definitely a harm involved. And so since he was so flagrant about it, if you don't punish him, what you're doing is you're sending a message to everyone else. Yeah. Cheat all you want. It doesn't matter. That's definitely the message. And you should. [00:06:13] Yeah, except be careful. Be careful guys. Unless you're an ordinary American citizen. Just ignore me. Don't do it. Don't do it. They'll crush you. They will reign terror on you. Okay. Prosecutors will come for you. Appeals courts will give you the middle finger if they even consider your appeal. [00:06:29] We live in a two tiered justice system. I don't know what else to say. Of course, of course. Let me just give you one statement from Peter Moulton. Hold on. One of the appeals judges who argued this. Well, harm certainly occurred. It was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify nearly half billion dollar award to the state. [00:06:46] Okay. Fair enough. So what is the liability? Zero. $0. What's the justification for that? So I don't know, like right now, our government, our country is being [00:07:01] looted by the richest people in the world. Okay, just. Hi. Hi. It's just, I don't know. The robbery never ends. There is no justice. I don't know what else I can comment on in this story. I'm not surprised at all at all by this. [00:07:17] So, you know, so from time to time, I'll say, hey, you know, Trump voters are actually not wrong about X, Y, or Z. And in this case the the fine was excessive, right? But one thing they're massively wrong about for sure. I can name many other things too. But, is this idea that the exception is being made to target Donald Trump? [00:07:36] No, the exception is being made to shield and protect Donald Trump, because that's why I was jumping into what Anna was saying. Don't do this if you're a normie, don't even come close to doing this. But even if you're wealthy, the very last thing you want to do [00:07:53] is try to cheat the banks in America. Because the banks have disproportionate power. You want to get arrested? There's one surefire way. Lie even 1% half, 0.01% to Goldman Sachs. Oh, you're a goner. [00:08:10] They don't care. You know, you could be. I've seen them put away super rich people. I've seen them put away Goldman Sachs workers, former board members, etc. Anyone that touches Goldman Sachs even like a little scratch and you go to prison for a long, long time. [00:08:26] Okay. The one exception to ripping off banks in America is the Trump exception. He Trump is even allowed to rip off the banks, which is amazing. It's not just Trump. Maybe in regard to committing the level of fraud that Trump was found guilty of committing, right? [00:08:42] Maybe in that case, but in terms of engaging in behavior that would typically get an ordinary American, you know, in prison, prosecuted as harshly as possible in prison and heavy fines. That same behavior is carried out by people in our political class, in the [00:09:01] elite class, and they get away with it. I mean, the prime example, of course, is insider trading, which happens inside Congress on a regular basis with impunity. So we just have to accept the fact that we don't live in the type of country that we learned about in our history books, in public schools. [00:09:18] Okay. We don't live in a country that believes in justice. We don't live in a country that actually believes in equality. We are not governed by the people. We are governed by the corporate elite and by Israel. Let's keep it real. That's the reality of our country. And so my question to the American people, regardless of how you identify which tribe [00:09:36] you think you belong to, left or right. Do you want to take your country back? Do you want to live in the country that we learned about in our history books? Because that's what I want. I am sick of the powerful looting this country. I am sick of ordinary people, okay? [00:09:54] Dealing with a government that's more interested in raining terror on them. If they step out of line a little bit and want answers to some pretty important questions about why we engage in the foreign policy, we engage in why it is that the wealthiest people pay a far smaller percentage of their income. [00:10:10] If you want to call capital gains income to taxes compared to ordinary, hard working Americans who have to rely on a wage in order to feed their families, that's the country we live in. People think, oh, Anna's red pilled. I'm not red pilled. I'm black pilled. Black pilled means I look at both parties, I look at our political system, [00:10:28] and I look at how Americans get shafted day in and day out. And unless people are serious about changing it, everything else we talk about is a waste of time. - That's how I feel. - Get money out of politics. Fight corruption us. We'll have the link down below. Last thing I'll say is just to be clear. [00:10:44] Look, the rich get away with almost everything. But you have to grease the politicians. So, like when they do the insider trading on Congress, that doesn't cost the banks anything. That doesn't cost the market anything. In fact, it adds to the market. What it does is it costs the average guy that's investing without that information. [00:11:00] So you wind up at a massive disadvantage. So anything that disadvantages the average guy, the people in power love and will protect because they're the ones that are taking advantage of you. Right. So you just can't cross Goldman Sachs and the big banks. Now for the first time, Asterix, unless you're Donald Trump. [00:11:19] Same thing with you. Can't lose money running a casino. Had to put an asterisk on that one, too. Unless you're Donald Trump. Right. So be careful. The regular the rules that apply to the super wealthy and connected do not apply to you. They will come down on you like a ton of bricks. [00:11:36] If you break any of these rules. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.