Trump the businessman is all smoke and mirrors

Remembering Brooks Robinson and a kindness he showed to a young reporter

By Ken Tingley

Over the years, I have found  two reasons people voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

First was their utter dislike for Hillary Clinton.

Second was the belief Donald Trump was a successful businessman who could run the government more efficiently.

Last week’s court decision in New York put to rest once and for all what kind of businessman Trump has been in the past.

The 35-page decision by Judge Arthur F. Engoron painstakingly refutes each and every defense offered by the former president and ultimately finds that the defense offered by his lawyers was laughable.

The judge makes that perfectly clear with his language in the decision. Consider the following:

“Defendants repeat the erroneous argument…”

“Defendants glaringly misrepresent…”

“Defendants also incorrectly rely….

“In flagrant disregard of prior orders of this Court and the First Department, defendants repeat the untenable notion that…”

“Defendants arguments that the factual record developed in discovery changed the landscape under which standing should be viewed is legally preposterous.”

It goes on like this page after page with the judge belittling the case in defense of Trump’s actions.

This was not politics, this was fraud.

If you don’t like lawyers, you will especially enjoy reading the decision.

Engoron repeatedly blasts the lawyers’ defense of how Trump overvalued property values to obtain loans as a waste of the court’s tim.

In ruling against Trump in the case, the judge also takes aim at the lawyers for using arguments and precedents already rejected by the judge.

For instance:

In rejecting such arguments for the second time, this court cautioned that sophisticated counsel should have known better. However, the Court declined to impose sanctions believing it had made its point. Apparently, the point was not received. One would not know from reading the defendants’ papers that this court had already twice ruled against these argument, called them frivolous and twice been affirmed by the First Department.

It sounded like the scolding of a child.

The judge called the use of the attorneys’ frivolous arguments “egregious.”

We are beyond the point of sophisticated counsel should have known better; We are at the point of intentional and blatant disregard of controlling authority and law of the case. This Court emphatically rejected these arguments as did the First Department. Defendants repetition of them here is indefensible.

He then sanctioned each of the lawyers $7,500 for their stall tactics. That won’t break any of them, but it may damage their reputations.

The judge says in conclusion:

While defendants have, by their own account, conducted extensive discovery and have created a complete record, they fail to point to a single fact that discovery has uncovered, let alone a single fact in the record that changes the calculus of their denied and doomed capacity and standing arguments.

The judge ultimately ruled that Trump’s businesses should be dissolved and the assets sold off.

So much for Trump the businessman.

Wasted time

While most of the country was concerned about the impending government shutdown on Friday, the House Oversight Committee was continuing with its impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden.

Historian and writer Heather Cox Richardson summed it up this way in her “Letters to America” column on Substack:

After a hearing that lasted more than six hours, highlights of which Aaron Rupar of Public Notice reposted on social media, Neil Cavuto of the Fox News Channel was unimpressed. He said that although (Rep. James) Comer (R-TN) had promised to present “a mountain of evidence” against President Biden, “none of the expert witnesses today presented…any proof for impeachment…. The way this was built up, ‘where there’s smoke there would be fire,’... but where’s there’s smoke today, we just got a lot more smoke.”

So when Rep. Greg Cesar (D-TX) asked members of the committee to raise their hands if they believe both Hunter Biden and Trump should be held accountable if found guilty, all the Democrats raised their hand but none of the Republicans did.

That tells you all you need to know about the legitimacy of this Republican inquiry.

Norman Rockwell’s famous photo of Brooks Robinson signing an autograph is one of my favorites.

Remembering Brooks

As the new sports editor of Oneonta Daily Star in 1983, I was looking forward to putting out our annual Baseball Hall of Fame induction issue.

Brooks Robinson, the amazing third baseman of the Baltimore Orioles, was being inducted. Robinson was a broadcaster for the Orioles so I arranged for press credentials and an interview with Robinson at Yankee Stadium.

I met up with Robinson in the Yankees dugout at the Stadium and with my big bulky tape recorder I did an interview. That the great Brooks Robinson gave up some of his time to a young journalist at a small newspaper was impressive.

Years later, I saw that Robinson was going to be signing autographs in Cooperstown. I went down and presented Brooks with a photo my brother took of me in the dugout with Brooks. I explained I had interviewed him at Yankee Stadium right before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Brooks pretended he remembered and signed my photo: “Ken, you are looking good. This was my best year, Brooks Robinson, HOF ‘83.

Brooks Robinson was the greatest third baseman I ever saw play the game. As good as he was on the field, my fondest memory was of that interview. He passed away this past week in Baltimore. He was 86.

Threat to NOLA

The real-life evidence of climate change just keeps piling up with the monsoon rain storms that crippled New York this past Friday.

I’ve been visiting my son in New Orleans the past week where the talk of the town is about an infusion of salt water that is coming up Mississippi River that could cripple the city’s fresh water supply and do damage to its infrastructure.

The cause is a midwest drought that lowered water levels in the Mississippi.

There has already been a run on bottled water in the city and the infusion is still a month away. The frightening part is there are actions under way to delay the salt water, but no tangible solution on how to stop it. Unless there is significant rain soon, the infusion could affect New Orleans for months.

We were planning another trip to New Orleans at Thanksgiving, but now we’re not so sure.

Ultimately, all these events are part of the bigger problem of climate change that the politicians seem unwilling to address significantly.

Let Freedom Read

Don’t forget Thursday’s event at Saratoga Springs Public Library that is part of Banned Book Week.

Seven local authors will be reading from banned books from each of the past seven decades.

Considering the recent closing of the Rockwell Falls Public Library, this even is more important than ever. It will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. and I am honored to be introducing the authors.