Like Captain Ahab clinging to the side of her white whale, Attorney General Tish James finally announced the result of her three-year investigation into Donald Trump: a civil suit that accuses him of overstating his assets.
The details are jaw-dropping yet no surprise to anyone who has listened to Trump boast about how he is the richest, smartest, most talented man to ever walk the earth. He values his own apartment at more than $300 million, three times the most expensive sale at the time.
Trump overvalued to convince banks to give him money, at the lowest interest rates possible. Whether for lack of due diligence, or because they didn’t care, they gave him the money. So James is rushing to the rescue of . . . big banks?
What James appears not to have proven, that which blue-check Twitter has spent years salivating about, is tax fraud. She’s referring her case to the IRS but provides little proof of Trump undervaluing assets to pay less tax.
Trump haters have to be disappointed. After years of screaming that Trump was a “crook,” all that James could even allege, in a civil case, is a real-estate developer lied to bankers — think his voters will care one whit? It’s pretty clear now why Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg didn’t pursue an indictment.
This announcement by James, who has a history of performative lawsuits as public advocate, is nakedly political. She ran for office promising to go after Trump, and has been grandstanding during the entire investigation.
Not that Trump is wholly untroubled. This adds to his menagerie of legal problems, will dog any political run in 2024, and could ban him from being the head of any business headquartered in the state. Yet with Trump’s luck, he’ll sell his gold-plated tower for a profit and set up his business in Florida, where he already lives anyway.
The investigation that really worries Trump, and the one that actually has serious import and repercussions for the nation, is the allegations that he mishandled classified documents. That’s the case that just might spell the end of Trump’s political career. Tish James is just theater.