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Real estate experts are claiming that Mar-a-Lago is worth far, far, far more than the amount that Judge Arthur Engoron has said it is worth.
To back up their claims, they cited the value of similar properties in the nearby region.
I think this should be included in the article.
What do other editors think?
https://nypost.com/2023/09/27/donald-trumps-mar-a-lago-worth-at-least-300m-sources/
SquirrelHill1971 ( talk) 06:41, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
Engoron did not say it was worth $18 million. He said county assessors appraised it at $18 million. MAL is deed restricted and "when you have restrictions on a property, it'll only decrease, not increase the value of the property." [1] soibangla ( talk) 23:08, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
Apart from a reference to Fox News, have there been any conservative reactions that should go in the Reactions section? Nowa ( talk) 21:07, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
Engoron's ruling comprises 92 pages. I (superficially) looked it through. I then read the section New York civil investigation of The Trump Organization#Ruling, and found a discrepancy as regards Ivanka. The problem is that on the one hand she was not a defendent but a witness; and that was treated in the ruling as a witness, not a defendant; while our article presents Engoron's characterization of Ivanka as a (bad) witness as if it were an implicit way of stating that she indeed were guilty, although for technical reasons not indicted. I think this factually goes against the great care we should take (and usually take) by WP:BLP. On the other hand, the quoted secondary source at least to some degree might be said to support the suggestion that Engoron did criticise Ivanka for participation in criminal activity as a part of his judgement; and agains this I only can put up my conviction from reading the primary source that this is not the case.
In fact, the major part of the ruling (pp. 7−60) described and commented on the testimonies from some 40 people, which included non-party witnesses, the defendants, party witnesses, and experts. Engoron spends rather varying lengths of texts on them, varying in length from a few lines on a testimony stroken from the record due to a sustained protest from the prosecution to over four pages for an expert witness from the defence (pp. 52−56). In most cases (excepting testimonies he considers irrelevant as not concerning the issues), he make some assessment on the reliability of the testimony. (My amateurish impression is that in general he found the independent witnesses and those called by the prosecution more reliable than those called by the defense.) As the secondary source notes, he spent one and a half page on the testimony by Ivanka Trump; he does note that she claimed that she didn't remember even matters where she had been involved in a central position, namely, in the negotiation of a major loan from Deutsche Bank, when questioned by the prosecution, but showed a much better memory for details when questioned by the defence; but his conclusions only concerned her realiable as a witness. She is mentioned also in a few other places; in the summaries of other testimonies, in the account of the legal history before the proceedings; and twice, briefly, in the later section on fraud in business. In the history, she is mentioned in the summary of an appelate court ruling from June 27, 2023 (pp. 4−5 of Engoron's ruling), which among others dismissed Ivanka from the charges. The two "fraud in business" mentions are one on p. 40, enumerating her as one of Donald Trumps three children getting a share of the gain after selling the Old Post Office, and once on p. 74, where the same people are enumerated as being the objects of an ongoing juridical investigation. The latter instance is a typical example of the care Engoron takes as regards "the non-defendant" Ivanka Trump. The investigation (which was well known to the defendants) is mentioned as part of showing that a declaration of the Trump Organization that they were not involved with or risked any litigation was false, supporting the charges against defendants (and none other).
Similarly, Ivankas "central role" in the loan negotiations just are employed for discussion of her claim that she didn't remember one of the more important points, namely, the great weight the bank put on personal guarantees from Dionald Trump, and statements about his liquidity needed to support these guarantees. (Trump Sr. was obligued to guarantee access to at least 2.5 billion dollars in cash at all times. He did so in later reports to the bank, by some typical Trumpish exaggeration, and by including the cash flow at a company where he just held a 30% ownership, and thus did not have access to its cash. The defense claimed that this was of no matter, since in reality the bank didn't care about this demands on Trump's liquidity. However, they did, as their non-party testimonies showed; and Ivanka at that time was very well aware of this, according to Engoron's findings from e. g. email; but seemingly Ivanka (who had negotiated a lowering from 3 billion to 2.5 billion) testfied that she didn't remember this.) Now, we may guess that Engoron had used this against Ivanka, if she would have been a defendant; but he never hints as much. Therefore, guessing this is what WP usually calls a synthesis. The secondary source ( Business Insider) IMHO makes a synthesis of this kind; I think that they give a fair description of the facts, as far as they go; but they present Engoron's 'suspicions' as if these concerned Ivanka being guilty of business fraud. As far as I read the ruling, the judges 'suspicions' are only presented as pertaining the veracity of Ivanka's testimony; thus, perhaps, it may be correct to say that he hints at her maybe being guilty of perjury (although he also does not state this or directly threatens her or any other witness with such charges), but nothing else. In the 'historic' section, some reasons for her earlier being indicted are implied; guilt of anything punishable (except possibly, if provable, perjury) is out of the question, after the appelate court's ruling.
In my mind, all this poses a complicated problem. If I'm right from just reading the primary source, the presentation of Engoron as stating that he suspects Ms. Trump of being guilty of business fraud is clearly against WP:BLP for two living people, namely, for Ivanka Trump and for Arthur Engoron. (I'm not a lawyer; but I suspect that if Engoron indeed had employed his legitimate discussion of just a witness'es reliability as a witness for seeding suspicions of her being culpable of a crime a higher court has dismissed from the preceedings, then Arthur himself might have been found guilty of some kind of misconduct. At least, it would have been considered as unprofessional, I think.) This could be remedied easily, by moving up this paragraph, adding a few words on Engoron's lengthy discussion of witnesses, and making it clear that one of the witnesses he found less reliable, and in this case even 'suspicious' (as regards the veracity of her claims of memory losses) was Ivanka. However, I could only do this based on my reading of the primary source. On the other hand, I do not think that we could let the IMHO incorrect synthesis stand; not in a WP:BLP matter. A third possibility would be to remove the entire paragraph (but thereby missing also completely eliminating the criticism the judge indeed did direct against one of the most wellknown figurants in this case). What do you think? JoergenB ( talk) 22:44, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
The article consistently uses the word "fine" to characterize the $364m judgement against Trump et al. But "fine" (or "penalty") is the wrong word. A fine is a penalty, a financial punishment. But Engoron's decision consistently uses the word " disgorgement" or the phrase "disgorgement of ill-gotten gains" as an "equitable remedy".
The article is also not clear that Law 63(12) intentionally does not require identifying a "victim":
This is a very important point. -- Macrakis ( talk) 00:07, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
New York business fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The
contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people, which has been
designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
Real estate experts are claiming that Mar-a-Lago is worth far, far, far more than the amount that Judge Arthur Engoron has said it is worth.
To back up their claims, they cited the value of similar properties in the nearby region.
I think this should be included in the article.
What do other editors think?
https://nypost.com/2023/09/27/donald-trumps-mar-a-lago-worth-at-least-300m-sources/
SquirrelHill1971 ( talk) 06:41, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
Engoron did not say it was worth $18 million. He said county assessors appraised it at $18 million. MAL is deed restricted and "when you have restrictions on a property, it'll only decrease, not increase the value of the property." [1] soibangla ( talk) 23:08, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
Apart from a reference to Fox News, have there been any conservative reactions that should go in the Reactions section? Nowa ( talk) 21:07, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
Engoron's ruling comprises 92 pages. I (superficially) looked it through. I then read the section New York civil investigation of The Trump Organization#Ruling, and found a discrepancy as regards Ivanka. The problem is that on the one hand she was not a defendent but a witness; and that was treated in the ruling as a witness, not a defendant; while our article presents Engoron's characterization of Ivanka as a (bad) witness as if it were an implicit way of stating that she indeed were guilty, although for technical reasons not indicted. I think this factually goes against the great care we should take (and usually take) by WP:BLP. On the other hand, the quoted secondary source at least to some degree might be said to support the suggestion that Engoron did criticise Ivanka for participation in criminal activity as a part of his judgement; and agains this I only can put up my conviction from reading the primary source that this is not the case.
In fact, the major part of the ruling (pp. 7−60) described and commented on the testimonies from some 40 people, which included non-party witnesses, the defendants, party witnesses, and experts. Engoron spends rather varying lengths of texts on them, varying in length from a few lines on a testimony stroken from the record due to a sustained protest from the prosecution to over four pages for an expert witness from the defence (pp. 52−56). In most cases (excepting testimonies he considers irrelevant as not concerning the issues), he make some assessment on the reliability of the testimony. (My amateurish impression is that in general he found the independent witnesses and those called by the prosecution more reliable than those called by the defense.) As the secondary source notes, he spent one and a half page on the testimony by Ivanka Trump; he does note that she claimed that she didn't remember even matters where she had been involved in a central position, namely, in the negotiation of a major loan from Deutsche Bank, when questioned by the prosecution, but showed a much better memory for details when questioned by the defence; but his conclusions only concerned her realiable as a witness. She is mentioned also in a few other places; in the summaries of other testimonies, in the account of the legal history before the proceedings; and twice, briefly, in the later section on fraud in business. In the history, she is mentioned in the summary of an appelate court ruling from June 27, 2023 (pp. 4−5 of Engoron's ruling), which among others dismissed Ivanka from the charges. The two "fraud in business" mentions are one on p. 40, enumerating her as one of Donald Trumps three children getting a share of the gain after selling the Old Post Office, and once on p. 74, where the same people are enumerated as being the objects of an ongoing juridical investigation. The latter instance is a typical example of the care Engoron takes as regards "the non-defendant" Ivanka Trump. The investigation (which was well known to the defendants) is mentioned as part of showing that a declaration of the Trump Organization that they were not involved with or risked any litigation was false, supporting the charges against defendants (and none other).
Similarly, Ivankas "central role" in the loan negotiations just are employed for discussion of her claim that she didn't remember one of the more important points, namely, the great weight the bank put on personal guarantees from Dionald Trump, and statements about his liquidity needed to support these guarantees. (Trump Sr. was obligued to guarantee access to at least 2.5 billion dollars in cash at all times. He did so in later reports to the bank, by some typical Trumpish exaggeration, and by including the cash flow at a company where he just held a 30% ownership, and thus did not have access to its cash. The defense claimed that this was of no matter, since in reality the bank didn't care about this demands on Trump's liquidity. However, they did, as their non-party testimonies showed; and Ivanka at that time was very well aware of this, according to Engoron's findings from e. g. email; but seemingly Ivanka (who had negotiated a lowering from 3 billion to 2.5 billion) testfied that she didn't remember this.) Now, we may guess that Engoron had used this against Ivanka, if she would have been a defendant; but he never hints as much. Therefore, guessing this is what WP usually calls a synthesis. The secondary source ( Business Insider) IMHO makes a synthesis of this kind; I think that they give a fair description of the facts, as far as they go; but they present Engoron's 'suspicions' as if these concerned Ivanka being guilty of business fraud. As far as I read the ruling, the judges 'suspicions' are only presented as pertaining the veracity of Ivanka's testimony; thus, perhaps, it may be correct to say that he hints at her maybe being guilty of perjury (although he also does not state this or directly threatens her or any other witness with such charges), but nothing else. In the 'historic' section, some reasons for her earlier being indicted are implied; guilt of anything punishable (except possibly, if provable, perjury) is out of the question, after the appelate court's ruling.
In my mind, all this poses a complicated problem. If I'm right from just reading the primary source, the presentation of Engoron as stating that he suspects Ms. Trump of being guilty of business fraud is clearly against WP:BLP for two living people, namely, for Ivanka Trump and for Arthur Engoron. (I'm not a lawyer; but I suspect that if Engoron indeed had employed his legitimate discussion of just a witness'es reliability as a witness for seeding suspicions of her being culpable of a crime a higher court has dismissed from the preceedings, then Arthur himself might have been found guilty of some kind of misconduct. At least, it would have been considered as unprofessional, I think.) This could be remedied easily, by moving up this paragraph, adding a few words on Engoron's lengthy discussion of witnesses, and making it clear that one of the witnesses he found less reliable, and in this case even 'suspicious' (as regards the veracity of her claims of memory losses) was Ivanka. However, I could only do this based on my reading of the primary source. On the other hand, I do not think that we could let the IMHO incorrect synthesis stand; not in a WP:BLP matter. A third possibility would be to remove the entire paragraph (but thereby missing also completely eliminating the criticism the judge indeed did direct against one of the most wellknown figurants in this case). What do you think? JoergenB ( talk) 22:44, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
The article consistently uses the word "fine" to characterize the $364m judgement against Trump et al. But "fine" (or "penalty") is the wrong word. A fine is a penalty, a financial punishment. But Engoron's decision consistently uses the word " disgorgement" or the phrase "disgorgement of ill-gotten gains" as an "equitable remedy".
The article is also not clear that Law 63(12) intentionally does not require identifying a "victim":
This is a very important point. -- Macrakis ( talk) 00:07, 29 February 2024 (UTC)