Attorney General Tish James’ civil suit against Donald Trump may be great for her career, but it’s a disaster for New York’s economy.
The Trump trial is a warning to anyone doing, or thinking of doing, business here: A headline-hunting prosecutor can go to a hack judge’s courtroom and use perverse New York laws to potentially destroy your company.
Sure, Trump’s local business reputation has long been . . . mixed. But he’s plainly being railroaded here.
Last month, Justice Arthur Enrogon ruled that financial documents Trump gave to banks and insurance companies “contain fraudulent valuations” of his real-estate assets, and proceeded to cancel business certificates permitting some of Trump’s companies to operate.
James is seeking a $250 million penalty; the court could dissolve the ex-prez’s businesses.
That’d be great news for Trump’s victims — except . . . there are no victims.
The judge himself admits it: “Defendants correctly assert that ‘the record is devoid of any evidence of default, breach, late payment, or any complaint of harm.’ ”
Yet he dismisses that as “irrelevant.”
Then again, this is the same judge who blocked a real-estate project because he disliked its “huge towers” and “you can’t just do this because the zoning allows it.”
In fact, you can, which is why his wacky ruling was tossed. (Why is he still on the bench?)
James, meanwhile, vowed to prosecute Trump as part of her campaign to become AG. (She’d find something, somehow, to get him on.)
And though her allegations are paper thin, she brought this case anyway — to the delight of fellow Democrats.
Never mind that prosecutors in Manhattan declined to file charges, because the claim that he inflated the value of his holdings to get better loan and insurance terms is beyond weak.
Do James and Enrogon think the bank and insurers’ high-falutin financial experts didn’t know Trump was a fabulist?
Were they unaware of his long record of creative business practices? Please.
Trump even points to a disclaimer warning that his valuations should not be relied on. Yet the judge and AG insist he can be found guilty of fraud nonetheless.
It’s shocking that a state can have judges, AGs and laws that permit such outrageous cases.
Proof that New York has an arbitrary “corporate death penalty” has a chilling effect: “Canceling business certificates is carte blanche to go after anyone for anything,” frets one developer. “It’s a little scary.”
It’s not just developers who need to worry; no business can feel safe when zealous AGs can exploit unjust, open-ended laws to make life hell for their chosen targets — usually of a different ideological belief — and capricious judges are ready to disregard any laws that should protect those targets.
Sure: Trump is no sympathetic defendant: He does embellish — and outright lie. He’s defiant, disrespectful and disobedient.
But that doesn’t make this persecution just.
If James triumphs here, New York’s economy will be paying the price for a painfully long time.
