Donald Trump is about to have a very shitty day in court. boo fucking hoo

here's how Trump could lose everything

Little Donny Fuckface is in court today, and he’s about to learn a fun new word: “disgorgement.”

today is the start of Phase 2 of Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York. Donny already lost Phase 1 last week, when Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump was a big fucking liar who had defrauded banks and investors.

that’s not even the best part: Judge Engoron also ordered the “corporate death penalty” for the Trump Organization and canceled all its business certificates.

Phase 2 is about damages — figuring out just how much Trump is going to have to shell out in penalties.

now, about “disgorgement,” and how it’s going to ruin Trump’s day, and possibly the rest of his life.

disgorgement is, simply —

a remedy requiring a party who profits from illegal or wrongful acts to give up any profits they made as a result of that illegal or wrongful conduct. The purpose of this remedy is to prevent unjust enrichment and make illegal conduct unprofitable.

here’s how it works:

let’s say you’re a greedy scumbag real estate developer. and because you’re a greedy scumbag, you lie about everything. you lie to banks and investors, claiming your shithole properties are worth more than they are. you lie to the IRS, claiming your properties are worth less than they are. you even lie about the size of your own unspeakably ugly gold-plated penthouse, for no good reason other than to stroke your stupid fragile ego.

ugh

and let’s say you do this for decades, eventually profiting from your fraudulent activities to the tune of a couple billion dollars.

now let’s say that you’re also a clumsy fucking dipshit who gets caught. and you’re so beyond-any-doubt guilty that the judge doesn’t even bother to put the case before a jury. he makes a summary judgement, tears your business certificates into tiny little pieces and throws them right in your stupid pumpkin face.

come back next week, the judge tells you, because that’s when the real fun will start.

which brings us to today.

James’ team will argue for disgorgement of profits, where the government reclaims the profit that was made from those loans. Prosecutors have already pointed to properties like Trump’s golf club in Miami, Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago and the Old Post Office building in Washington DC as properties that were paid for, in part, by the misleading financial statements.

holy shit, Letitia James is not fucking around.

this has the potential to be absolutley ruinous for Donny. as David Cay Johnston wrote last week,

The self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday.

His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.

shoot that shit straight into my veins.

Trump has been claiming that “no one was hurt” by his criming, and that the banks eventually got their money back, but the law doesn’t give a fuck about that.

if Donald Trump has the capacity to understand how truly fucked he is, he should be shitting his diapers right now, because judges and prosecutors have had it up to here with his flagrant criming, and not one of them is inclined to show him the slightest bit of mercy.

the “fuck around” phase of Trump’s life is over. welcome to “finding out.”

consequences, it’s what’s for breakfast. have a great fucking day, Donny.

folks, a word on a different subject before I let you go: we’re doing some quarterly fundraising at my other venture, The Smirking Chimp. I’m leery of even mentioning it because if you’re one of the people paying to support my own writing here, you’re already doing god’s work and you’re already doing more than enough to help out. but if you’ve got five dollars that you absolutely wouldn’t miss and you do feel like supporting the Chimp, well, that just makes you twice the hero. the donation link is here, or you can go straight to paypal if you need no further convincing. and if you don’t care to donate, that’s totally cool, too, and we will not speak of this again. in fact, we never had this conversation. thanks for listening and that’s it from me for now.