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> main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans > The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals

The first part is either a crime, or it is not, regardless of the second? Suppose I falsely say I am worth millions, and then actually win the lottery. It being true later doesn't change whether it was lie originally.



That's exactly why my first point was that it was a civil lawsuit brought by the Attorney General, not a criminal case: the underlying overstatement of real estate values was not charged as the crime of fraud, which would have required more proof including proof of intent and actual harm—of which the former would have been hard to prove, and the latter did not exist. The District Attorney (who handles criminal matters like fraud) decided there was no criminal case, but the Attorney General took it as a civil matter despite there being no criminal case and nobody unhappy about the deals. It was purely a political prosecution.


Crimes that are not known about are frequently not punished.

Rubbing it in everyone's face is not a great idea.

But, and this is the much more important point you are missing, is the difference between prosecuted for a crime you comitted regardless of how people learnes about it, and using completely unfounded accusations in order to use the prosecution itself as a punishment.

Trump has been prosecuted, several times, for actual crimes he committed. Hilary clinton as an example, had to deal with the obviously fake prosecution attempts of benghazi and email servers.

This is a gigantic and meaningful difference.

Have other people done some of these trump crimes and not gotten prosecuted? Sure, but that's not exactly a good thing.

Directing the doj to manufacture crimes in order to prosecute is much much worse.


A prosecution can be political even if a crime or tort was committed. Our government prosecutes only a small percent of committed crimes.

If Donald Trump had not run for President, or even had just been a normal President, or maybe even if he’d have done everything he did except for cause January 6, he absolutely would never have been prosecuted for this. The justice system was weaponized against him, even if he was actually guilty, which he surely was.




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