There is a familiar story of a formerly rich man asked by an acquaintance how he went bankrupt. His response was “Slowly at first and then very quickly.” Of course in the business world no one has had more practice at this than Donald Trump. But his long road of being a “billionaire” with other people’s money may have hit a final pothole—or sinkhole.
In firing Trump and his company as clients, Mazars letter of February 9th, declared that his financial records going back 10 years could not be relied upon for accuracy.
What does this mean? One thing for sure is that bankers who issued loans to Trump’s company are having panicky conferences about how much bad paper they may be holding. Add to this the strengthening of various investigations into Trump for fraud and other criminality and we can see that we are witnessing an acceleration of his decline.
More and more of the blinders that have existed around Trump and his business practices are being stripped away. And with the loss of each one of these his patterns of behavior over the past years come into sharper focus. As we have written—pretty often—Trump behaves like a standard garden variety criminal. He points blame at others for what look to be his own actions. And with the Mazars story breaking—expect a lot more to come out—Trump turned up his rhetoric of distraction. Over the past few days he restarted his accusations against Hillary Clinton and Democrats “spying” on his campaign and calling for her execution for espionage.
Of course, to anyone attuned to his accusation factor, recollection goes back to the day when he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office. Humor outlets called the photos of the meeting—only available from Russia’s Tass at the time—as a meeting between three Russian spies. His accusation of espionage against Clinton tells us the humorists were pretty much on the mark.
What’s going on below the surface is probably total turmoil in Trumpland and the methodical weaving of the noose—or straight jacket—in the office of the New York Attorney General Leticia James.
Heather Cox Richardson wrote yesterday:
“…it appears that Mazars is now working with James’s office. Last month, James’s office alleged that there is “significant” evidence that the Trump Organization manipulated asset valuations to obtain loans and avoid taxes. Now Trump’s accountants appear to be working with her office and have said that Trump’s past ten years of financial statements “should not be relied upon.”
It has not been much of a surprise that criminal activity and Trump are closely related. He apparently has some idea that laws don’t apply to him on any front—like taking 15 boxes of documents belonging to the government to Mar-a-Lago, including classified and top secret docs. Of course his surrogates like Marco Rubio are saying there’s nothing wrong with that—creating questions about their own security practices.
We can only guess where this will go. We predict that the term RICO will raise its head over the next few days.
One thing we can certainly depend on is that there are probably more shoes still waiting to be dropped. A lot more. Maybe like the entire contents of Imelda’s closet. Bring on the popcorn…
