Donald Trump is a criminal and a perjurer. This is not up for debate. That a Federal judge in California just ruled that Trump submitted a false sworn statement to a Georgia court falls in the category of “Dog bites man.” Except here it is, “Trump commits perjury.” Again.
Technically, the ruling by Federal District Judge David Carter was about whether certain e-mails of John Eastman, Trump’s consigliere in the criminal effort to overturn the 2020 election, had to be turned over to the January 6 Commission. In reality, it demonstrated, once again, that Trump is a criminal.
Eastman and the commission were fighting over whether an additional 562 of the lawyers’ emails had to be turned over - adding to the trove of such documents already released by the judge. Of the remaining number, Judge Carter held that eight emails were evidence of a conspiracy to defraud a Georgia court where Trump had filed suit alleging that the voter count in that state was “inaccurate.”
The eight emails - which normally might have been protected under attorney-client privilege if they weren’t evidence of a pesky conspiracy to defraud the United States - had to be released under what is called “the crime-fraud exemption.” Usually applied to mob lawyers who use their privilege of confidentiality to participate in criminal activities with their clients, the exemption did not apply to the eight emails, the judge found, because they were evidence that Trump tried to perjure himself into a second term, with the assistance of Eastman.
As somebody who has known Trump since 1987, I’ve got to tell you - I knew one of the sworn statements submitted to the Georgia court by the former president would be perjury long before this ruling in California. Trump has a lifelong tell - the more specific the numbers he cites in sworn testimony or statements, the bigger the lie.
Here, the numbers could scarcely have been more specific. On December 4, 2020, Trump and his attorneys filed a sworn statement in a Georgia state court that the count of votes in Fulton County (read: African American voters) included 10,315 dead people, 2,560 felons, and 2,423 unregistered voters. The idea that Trump and his clown car of attorneys could have dug up such specific numbers less than 30 days after the election was laughable from the get-go.
Trump then went to federal court, where he prepared to file that same sworn statement. But just in case there was any doubt he had specific knowledge that these numbers were bogus, a December 31, 2020 email from Eastman, the lawyer states that Trump was told - after the state filing but before the federal one - that all of those specific numbers were “inaccurate.” That’s lawyer-speak for whopper, fabrication, fable, and all the other words you might find in a thesaurus for “lie.”
But that would never be an issue for Trump. Perjury is like a warm slipper for him - comfy, familiar, and soothing. “President Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint with the same inaccurate numbers without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing them,” Judge Carter wrote in his ruling. “President Trump, moreover, signed a verification swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers ‘are true and correct’ or ‘believed to be true and correct’ to the best of his knowledge and belief.” That’s lawyer-speak for perjury.
Oh, Donny, Donny, Donny. Yes, you’ve engaged in a lifetime of perjury, but eventually, it was going to blow up in your face. He’s whining and moaning that he’s being unfairly treated just because he was president, which is, um, exactly the point: Blowhard real estate developers and reality TV stars can get away even with obvious perjury because it’s rarely worth the prosecutorial resources to charge a wealthy liar whose very career depends on deceit.
I’m sure there are examples dating back further, but the first time I witnessed Trump perjure himself was in 1993, when he lied while under oath before Congress. The Senate hearings were about casinos on Native American reservations, and as experts testified that everything was just fine in those locations - no infiltration of organized crime, for instance - Trump’s anger was evident as his face turned increasingly red. Trump, who at the time was a major casino operator, appeared before the panel and began raging at the Native American casino operators, spewing racism and conspiracy theories. They “don’t look like Indians,” he oozed before launching into an evidence-free tirade about "rampant" criminal activities on reservations.
"If [Indian gaming] continues as a threat, it is my opinion that it will blow. It will blow sky high. It will be the biggest scandal ever or one of the biggest scandals since Al Capone," Trump said. "That an Indian chief is going to tell [mobster] Joey Killer to please get off his reservation is almost unbelievable to me."
Rather than leaving senators outraged by his rampant racism, Trump could have been handling the growth of Native American casinos the same way other casino magnates were, by striking agreements to manage the facilities for them. Trump knew that those management contracts were available but perjured himself by stating that he had never negotiated to get one.
But the evidence proved Trump was committing a crime before Congress. just few months before his sworn testimony, just a few months before, he had been negotiating the very kind of deal he denied under oath to have been negotiating. Richard Milanovich, the official from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians submitted an affidavit that he had met personally with Trump to negotiate a management contract - and produced letters on Trump Organization letterhead and phone records to prove it. The deal for the Agua Caliente casino instead went to Caesars World. If he had not perjured himself before Congress, Trump would have to had admit he had lost in the competition for a contract against someone else, just like 27 years later his ego let him to perjure himself before the Georgia court rather than just admitting he lost an election.
That ego also came into play in his lying about his net worth, the alleged deceptions that has resulted in the New York Attorney General filing a civil fraud complaint against him, his kids, the Trump Organization, and several of his affiliated companies. His malignant narcissism always led Trump to boast that his purported billions, and in sworn testimony he revealed why he lied so often about his wealth. In a 2007 deposition, Trump said he based estimates of his net worth at times on "psychology" and "my own feelings,” as if 2+2=9 when Donnie feels like it. But those “feelings” led him to undertake the very kinds of actions that have resulted in last month’s civil fraud complaint years the time listed in the lawsuit. In 2004, he signed sworn unaudited financials to Deutsche Bank while seeking a loan, claiming he was worth $3.5 billion. The bank concluded Trump was, to say the least, puffing; it put his net worth at $788 million, records show. (Trump personally guaranteed $40 million of the loan to his company, so Deutsche coughed up the money. He later - surprise, surprise - defaulted on that commitment.)
What is most disturbing in Trump's sworn statements is the amount of nonsense he spouts as he mangles the English language into meanings no rational person could accept. An unsuccessful "development by Donald Trump" is not a "development by Donald Trump." A successful project built by another developer who paid to have Trump's name on the building is a "Donald Trump development." A payment of $400,000 equals a payment of $1 million. An ownership stake of 30 percent is actually a 50 percent stake. In a single sentence, he says he knows some people's “names” but not their “identities.” He studied résumés, but he only glanced at them, so he doesn’t know what they say. The list goes on, with one point in common: Every one of his answers, while under oath, depends not on the truth but on whether it makes him look good.
In December 2008, just after the Democrats won the White House, Trump wrote on his personal blog, "Hillary is smart, tough and a very nice person and so is her husband." He then added, "Bill Clinton was a great president." The words are simple and clear. But in 2016, in a deposition given in a lawsuit against Trump involving allegations of fraud regarding his real estate courses (called Trump University), the plaintiff's lawyer asked Trump if he had ever called Bill Clinton a great president. Trump refused to answer directly, saying the scandal involving Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky had damaged his presidency. Finally, the lawyer showed Trump the blog post in which he had praised Bill Clinton as president and asked if Trump believed what he wrote.
"I was fine with it at the time," Trump replied. "I think in retrospect, looking back, it was not a great presidency because of his scandals." In other words, in 2008 Trump thought Clinton was a great president, but then because of the Lewinsky scandal—something that occurred a decade before that blog post—he changed his mind. How did he explain the obvious lie? "It's not something I gave very much thought to then because I wasn't in politics," he said.
That— surprise again! —was also a lie. Trump had been giving plenty of thought to politics for more than a decade. In fact, in 1999, in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, he said, "While I have not decided to become a candidate at this time, if the Reform Party nominated me, I would probably run and probably win." Not only that, but Trump's staff that year contacted dozens of officials to ask about his running as the Reform Party candidate and had examined the ballot requirements for the 29 states where the party was not yet on the ballot. He also announced his position on a number of issues, including his support for abortion rights.
And yet, come 2016, Trump said—under oath—that he hadn't thought about politics "much" as late as 2008, nine years after his first planned run for the presidency.
In that same deposition, Trump was asked if he had ever said Hillary Clinton would be a great vice president or president. After receiving an assurance that the exhibit being held by the plaintiff's lawyer did not contain that statement, Trump said he didn't think he had ever said it. Then the plaintiff's lawyer produced a different exhibit, another 2008 blog post by Trump: "I know Hillary, and I think she would make a great president or vice president."
How could Trump now be claiming Hillary Clinton was too incompetent to be president? "Well, I didn't think too much about it," he lied again. In other words, Trump claimed in sworn testimony that he was writing blog posts without thinking and said many things he did not believe. In that same 2016 deposition, Trump was confronted with a marketing video in which he said professors and adjunct professors would be teaching the classes for Trump University. He was then asked if he knew the identities of the adjunct professors. "I know names, but I really don't know the identities," he said. As with many of Trump's dismissals of evidence when he is caught, the answer makes no sense. P.S.: He never gave the names "he knew" of the adjunct professors; that would have been a challenge, since those people did not exist.
Trump often doesn't even try to make sense when explaining away a lie. In 2011, he was deposed about a failed Florida condo project. The building's developer had paid a licensing fee to slap the Trump name on it, but—other than allowing his name to be used in marketing to deceive potential buyers—Trump had nothing to do with the project, which closed after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in nonrefundable deposits. During Trump's testimony under oath, the plaintiff's lawyer confronted him with marketing material in which he had boasted that the building would be a "signature development by Donald J. Trump." Despite the indisputable meaning of those words, Trump disputed them: When the advertising says the building is a development by Donald Trump, "in some cases they're developed by me and in some cases they're not." He never explained how "developed by Trump" can mean "not developed by Trump" but pointed out that the lengthy legal documents signed by those unfortunate buyers disclosed in the fine print that he was not the builder. Why, then, the plaintiff's lawyer asked, didn't he include that disclosure in the advertising rather than the misleading "signature development" clause? "You can't put it in the advertising because there's not enough room," Trump replied.
Clearly perplexed, the plaintiff's lawyer tried to get Trump to explain how the same words could mean different things. "It's your testimony that the statement 'this signature development by Donald J. Trump' is consistent with the position that Donald J. Trump is not a developer of this project?"
"Absolutely," Trump testified.
The all-time classic Trump deposition is the one he gave in 2007 in a libel lawsuit he brought against Timothy O'Brien, author of TrumpNation, because the book stated that Trump's net worth was far less than he claimed. (It was. Just ask Deutsche Bank.) Throughout this deposition, Trump sounded delusional, in what some might dismiss as compulsive lying. But knowing Trump, I don't think he was lying; he believed what he was saying, but the facts just kept getting in his way.
Trump needed to prove he was damaged by the purported libel, but he wasn't content with just saying he had lost some specific bit of business. Instead, he claimed to have lost business he never knew existed. "The fact is that a lot of people who would have done deals with me didn't come to do deals with me," he testified. "I can't tell you who they are because they never came to me."
Then there were the questions about what he owns. Trump was shown a nasty note he had written to a reporter in which he claimed to own 50 percent of a Manhattan property called the West Side Yards. In fact, he owned 30 percent, but rather than simply say he'd made a mistake, Trump claimed 30 percent equals 50 percent. "I own 30 percent," he testified. "And I've always felt I owned 50 percent." The reason, Trump explained, was that he didn't put up any of his money in the deal, an explanation that makes no sense and does not change the fact that 30 percent is not, nor never will be, 50 percent.
His flexibility with numbers showed up later in the deposition, when confronted with public statements he had made about being paid $1 million to make a particular speech; he had received only $400,000—a huge sum that he still felt compelled to more than double. Well, Trump explained, the marketing he received in advertisements for the speech was worth so much to him that the amount of money he received was equal to $1 million. (Don't try to understand that. It will make your brain melt.)
Trump was later shown a letter he wrote to The Wall Street Journal, which mentioned two of "his" developments, including Trump Tower in Waikiki. Just like in the failed Florida project, Trump had simply sold his name to the developer. This time, though, the building was a success, so Trump claimed the Hawaiian development as his own. How? "It really is a form of ownership, because this is such a strong licensing agreement that I consider it to be a form of ownership," he testified. That is hogwash; ownership entails a series of obligations and liabilities. Through the licensing agreement, Trump assumed none of those, apart from making sure the company building the project did not market it by claiming Trump was the developer.
The perjury goes on and on and on. So, no one should be surprised that he appears to have perjured himself again about losing the Native American casino contract - oops, I mean the election. And that may be the very problem: Trump doesn’t realize there is a big difference when a President of the United States lies under oath than when it’s done by some schmuck whose life is built around tabloid publicity. And unfortunately, somehow, the schmuck became president. So hopefully, this time, Trump will finally learn that perjury is an actual crime.
I've always felt that his narcism is so severe that he is actually delusional. Of course, he is also a sociopath. No so much a human being as the shell of a human being with no soul.
It sounds as if he doesn't give much thought to anything.