No. of Recommendations: 6
There was no fraud. Asset management - especially of property - is partially accounting, partially an art form.
Claiming that there was no fraud is different than claiming that there were no harmed parties.
The judge found that Trump lied about the value of his assets to his lenders. You can disagree with whether the evidence supports that finding or not. But if Trump did lie about the value of his assets, then those lenders would have been harmed by the lies - because they would have taken actions/refrained from taking actions that cost them money.
Question for you: Do you think Mar-A-Lago is worth $27.6 million?
It's certainly worth closer to $27.6 million than $400-600 million.
Property appraiser assessments are never 100% accurate reflections of market value - and they're not intended to be, usually, given that property appraisers use specific valuation methods that are designed to ostensibly prioritize other values, like ease of administration and uniformity across the jurisdiction. So if I see a property appraiser value (in Florida) of $27.6 million, it would not be surprising if the property were worth even as much as double that.
But more than an order of magnitude higher? No.
