(New York State Attorney General Letitia James announces she does not want to take possession of Trump Tower in Manhattan in order to satisfy a preliminary ruling that will be appealed on a variety of Constitutional Issues against a former senior Administration official).
Tough morning, and we beg your forgiveness for our lack of preparation. We sent a memo to Legal, asking for their professional opinion on whether any of this could possibly be legal. The Daiyl was easierIt took three separate issues- the seasonal change to Spring that happened in the last hour, the news that Experts have decided that the Universe we share between us is twice as old as previously thought, and the remarkable testimony by one of Hunter Biden’s former associates, Mr. Tony Bobulinsky, up on The Hill yesterday.
We celebrated the arrival of Spring this morning with an amalgamation style story. We were frustrated, since we do not claim to understand how the State of New York and the various judicial entities there have decided to make our next general election their choice and not ours. A Judge considerably more junior than Ms James also decided to place his office in change of the former President’s assorted business affairs for a period of three years duration.
This is so comprehensive an affront to how we thought the law was supposed to work that it has become comic. There are some results of the proceedings that involve number so large as to be elephantine, if that were not a mixed metaphor for the symbols of donkeys and pachyderms. Let’s just take a minute to sample some of the vehicles in the parade. You will recall a woman who claimed a former President had disparaged her claim that the plot of a television show represented the truth to an event that occurred in a year she could not remember about a sexual assault that was never proven. Her reward was $83 million bucks. It seemed like a lot of money at the time, but remember, this was a civil proceeding, not a criminal one. That means “most of the jury thinks it might have happened,” rather than “convicted of a crime based on unanimous jury decision of guilt.”
So, despite that distinction, the stack of cash that Letitia is insisting on is pretty amazing. It struck us as a lot of money. But that was before the New York State Atotrney General, Ms Letitia James, worked her magic on a criminal act of improperly inflating the value of real estate property in Manhattan. We get a little lost in that one, since the people from whom the money was borrowed did not complain about lack or repayment or the profit they made in the transaction. So, absent a victim, we were surprised that a verdict came down fining the current President’s predecessor $454 Million, due this coming Monday.
That is more than a half billion bucks, if you have been counting. Apparently the cash was posted on the civil case, decided a few weeks ago. All of us were wondering how even a rich guy like Trump is supposed to fish around in his jeans and come up with the remainder of the half billion this weekend. We thought it seemed a little, well, “Large.”
As it turns out, we should either be better plugged into New York legal channels. For whatever reason, Wall Street is posting record numbers on this first afternoon of Spring. We assume that is a bubble of some kind, but if we understood the stock market we would be wealthy and able to hire a handful of what used to be called “journalists” to explain it to us. How it actually worked out was pretty amazing, and impressive, since Ms. James may have to give it right back.
As part of the ongoing legal carnival, the former President had started his own social media organization back when he was cast out from a site formerly known as “Twitter.” He called his new one a thing called “Truth Social.” It was supposed to enable people to chat about current events without being branded as disseminators of mal-dis-mis-information.
We paid no particular attention to it, though we recall signing up for it when it was new. We never got around to actually using it. The site went “public” in an offering this week and it did pretty well.
We took that approaching since we have been filled with wonder at the legal shenanigans- the “malarky,” if you will- about all the political figures of the moment.
Until a few hours ago, we were unprepared to see that the former President is expected to gain $3 billion, doubling his net worth. We had heard he was ranked the 5th richest guy on earth, so this may make him the richest as a result of the windfall from his social media outlet going public.
Need specifics? This is all we know. Investors voted to approve a merger between an entity called “Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC)” and “Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG),” the owner of Truth Social. The newly combined company could begin trading on the Nasdaq Composite Index as early as next week under the DJT ticker, the same symbol used for Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts before it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004.
Based on the $44 price before the vote announcement, the newly-formed company will debut with a roughly $5 billion market value. So, it looks like the amount that must be posted, according to Ms. James is really sort of loose change if you have enough of it laying around on (or in) the office furniture.
So, we don’t have members of the SEIU on hand to start disassembling the Trump Tower on Monday, as far as we can tell. But of course, there is a mighty legal machine that seems to be operating in some sort of well-ordered campaign in which “guilt” or “legality” don’t appear to have much of a role. We wondered how this was going to lurch forward, and some of it has been revealed. We were on the edge of our seats, you know?
We will go into the weekend still wondering about the really big stack of cash this is actually about. The six appropriations bills that have to be passed today or the Government shuts down. At the moment, we are not universally opposed to that notion. In fact…
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