April, 2023, NY District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted dj trump for grossly exaggerating the values of his NY properties in order to obtain loans at more favorable rates. As a result, the court awarded the State of NY damages in the order of $454 million. trump, as is often the case, filed an appeal to reduce the bond, citing inability to secure a guarantor.

Recently, some conservative colleagues claimed that the amount of the fine was politically motivated, with an unfair and excessive financial penalty. The court, they claimed, ruled much too harshly for a crime which had no actual victims. My response to them would be; NY State Law was violated with the perpetrator knowingly falsifying documents and financial records in violation of NY Penal Code 175.10.

Their argument, therefore, entirely misses the point. The convenient assertion that no harm resulted is irrelevant. The court's decision was determined by a thorough investigation of the defendants recurring exaggerated property value estimates, a clear violation of the Penal Code.

The State of NY had no motive to impose political favor in their decision. trump violated a NY State law clearly defined in its statutes numerous times and was indicted based on sufficient and plausible evidence.

Public records also indicate a litany of past law suits against trump. His farcical trump university, neither accredited nor a university, was ordered to pay $25 million in restitution to over 6000 defrauded students the same year his 'trump charity' was shuttered by the State of NY for the illegal personal and political use of its funds and fined $2million dollars. trump's six failed business venture bankruptcies, countless 'failure to pay' legal defense bill challenges, undisclosed foreign debt creditors (also omitted from his required federal filing) and the existing multimillion dollar judgements against him exhibit a nihilism of habitual fraud, dishonesty and total disregard for the rule of law. The ludicrous rightwing preoccupation of an innocent man wrongly accused is a grande fools' errand, with plenty of local actors.

George Deeb,

Pocatello