Donald Trump got caught red-handed during his $250 million New York bank fraud trial on Monday when lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office revealed Trump had long ago signed financial documents with the clear intent that they would be used to curry favor with banks.
After being shown a loan agreement he had signed with Deutsche Bank in 2012, Trump agreed that his faulty financial statements were intended to induce banks to lend money.
While it might not sound like much, the admission is key to the New York attorney general’s case, which hopes to prove that Trump deceived banks and insurers by massively overvaluing his net worth. Trump essentially admitted on the stand that these financial documents were produced with the express intent to induce lending. The Trump Organization was likely able to secure loans at far lower interest rates due to all the overinflated valuations.
The NY case is going to end up with hundreds of millions of fines and the dismantling of Trump’s real estate business. Which is a pretty big deal.
There is a common sentiment of “just send him to jail already” but that’s not how due process works. He’s not going to get sentenced to jail before he’s been convicted in the Georgia case or the federal cases.
And despite the common sentiment, people aren’t generally thrown in jail for the first violation of a gag order, or even the second one. They generally get fined a few thousand dollars the first few times, which is exactly what happened to Trump.
Jailing Trump for two gag order violations might be briefly satisfying, but it would be immediately reversed on appeal and throw the whole case into question. So the judges need to do everything by the book.