Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Lock'em Up

This is the civil side, not criminal, but people certainly get hit with indictments for much less.
 
  • Misstated objective facts, like the size of Mr. Trump’s Trump Tower penthouse;
  • Miscategorized assets outside Mr. Trump’s or the Trump Organization’s control as “cash,” thereby overstating his liquidity;
  • Misstated the process by which Mr. Trump or his associates reached valuations, including deviations from generally accepted accounting principles in ways that the statements did not disclose;
  • Failed to use fundamental techniques of valuation, like discounting future revenues and expenses to their present value, or choosing as “comparables” only similar properties in order to impute valuations from public sales data;
  • Misstated the purported involvement of “outside professionals” in reaching the valuations; and
  • Failed to advise that certain valuation amounts were inflated by an undisclosed amount for brand value.