Don’t know what you’re talking about. One last time,
When Donald Trump takes a commercial real estate loan opportunity to a bank, the bank will thoroughly evaluate the projected cash flows from the project and will have an independent appraiser appraise the property. It will then do an overall risk assessment and decide whether it wants to do the loan as requested, or perhaps decide it needs a guarantor of sufficient financial strength to overcome some risk they see in the project.
Or someone like Trump will offer a guarantee in return for a lower interest rate, lower fees, and/or extended terms. In either case the bank typically does not have all of the guarantors assets appraised by an independent appraisers. Instead, they typically take information provided to the bank by the guarantor about his assets and make some estimate , based on the knowledge they have of what those assets might actually be worth within a range.
The problem here, as you’ve been told many times is not that Trump pumped up the values on his financial statement. It’s that he gave information about his assets that was false and he did so repeatedly and deliberately. Like saying his Trump tower penthouse was three times larger than it actually is. Like failing to reveal deed restrictions on Mar-a-Lago, that significantly reduce its market value.

He committed fraud, and got value for it. I don’t know how much of the fine represents the value he got, and how much of it is punitive. But he deserves punitive.

[Post edited by 111Balz at 02/22/2024 4:18PM]