We knew they knew, but now there’s even more evidence that they knew.
Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump took part in a fraudulent scheme to sell units in a luxury New York condominium-hotel and “knew they were lying”, according to a new book that explores how the current US president built his business empire.
Questions have long surrounded a criminal investigation into the Trump family’s dealings around the Trump SoHo that was dropped in 2011. Public disclosure of email correspondence revealed that Don Jr and Ivanka knowingly used figures that exaggerated how well the condos were selling in a ploy to lure more buyers.
Also how would they not know, also it was their responsibility to know. If you’re going to tell buyers a thing that will make them want to buy what you’re selling, you have a responsibility to make sure the thing you’re telling them is not a lie. I think it’s a legal responsibility as well as a moral one, because there is such a thing as fraud, and there are known ways to ensure one is not committing it. Step one: don’t just make shit up to flog your wares.
The episode is re-examined with fresh reporting by the journalist Andrea Bernstein in her book American Oligarchs: The Kushners, The Trumps And The Marriage Of Money And Power, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian.
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The Trumps left a damaging email trail, first reported by the ProPublica website in 2017, that Bernstein writes “showed a coordinated, deliberate and knowing effort to deceive buyers. In one email, the Trumps discussed how to coordinate false information they had given to prospective buyers. Because the sales levels had been overstated at the beginning of the sales process, any statement showing a lower level could reveal the untruths.”
The author continues: “In another email, according to a person who read them, the Trumps worried that a reporter might be on to them. In yet another email chain that included Don Jr and Ivanka, the younger generation of Trumps issued the email equivalent of a knowing chuckle, saying that nobody would ever find them out, because only people on the email chain or in the Trump Organization knew about the deception.
Hur hur. I bet their lives have been full of knowing chuckles. Princess Barbie Doll is a knowing chuckling crook, and the weirdly smooth hair can’t hide that.
“There was ‘no doubt’ that the Trump children ‘approved, knew of, agreed to, and intentionally inflated the numbers to make more sales,’ one person who saw the emails said. ‘They knew it was wrong.’ ‘It couldn’t have been more clear they lied about the sales and knew they were lying,’” another person said.
“Yet another said, ‘I was shocked by the words Ivanka used.’ Was there any doubt the Trumps knew they were lying and that it was wrong? ‘Ten thousand percent no.’”
Now the Princess has a security clearance. Isn’t life interesting?
