How Trump Said Too Much and Helped New York Investigators

R&I – TxPAT ***

Donald Trump couldn’t help himself, and in his boastful attempts to show that he knows everything, he managed to hand investigators exactly what they needed.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers filed documents alleging that he “denies knowledge”—and doesn’t even know enough “to form a belief”—about the way he allegedly slapped a 30-percent brand premium on some business properties in 2014.

But the very next day, Trump said the complete opposite when he issued a lengthy statement to counter news that his long-time outside accounting firm, Mazars USA, had suddenly ditched him.

On Wednesday, prosecutors contended in a letter that Trump can no longer play clueless; he had just revealed that he knows “exactly what OAG is investigating.”

“His answer is more than merely legally deficient: it plainly contradicts his public statements,” they wrote.

That self-own was compounded on Thursday, when a state judge ordered him to turn over evidence about shady real estate values in a case about the Trump Organization’s alleged bank and tax fraud. Trump’s incessant need to boast ended up revealing he had more evidence to turn over.

He said too much—at just the wrong time.

And now that New York State Judge Arthur F. Engoron issued an order on Thursday compelling Trump to turn over documents, the New York AG’s lawyers can specifically ask for the information they now know exists.

After news broke on Monday that Mazars dropped him, the former president and his staff were conspicuously silent on the topic. Trump, who usually spouts off as soon as he can, did not release a statement until a full day later—on Tuesday evening—when his spokespeople finally blasted out a typically baffling missive.

Regardless, the quintessentially Trumpian boastfulness of Tuesday’s written statement may have been just enough to hand the twice-impeached former president’s “enemies” something new to wield.

“It seems somebody dropped the ball, though, doesn’t it?” the person familiar with the situation asked, rhetorically.

 

Captain

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