News Analysis
In the
high stakes New York trial of
leading presidential candidate Donald Trump, Judge Arthur Engoron
ruled in September that Mr. Trump defrauded his lenders by
inflating the value of his famed Mar-a-Lago estate by “
at least 2,300 percent, compared” to an “appraisal” by the Palm Beach County Tax Assessor.
Several news outlets from
left to
right challenged that claim because it’s blatantly flawed.
CNN, for example, reported: “[I]t’s widely known that the tax assessor valuation is typically, though not always, less than what a property would command on the open market.”
This well-known fact is documented by a wide array of real estate industry leaders and business publications, such as
Realtor.com,
Zillow, and
U.S. News & World Report. The last of these explains in bold letters that the “assessed value of a property is typically lower than appraised market value.”
Mr.
Engoron, an NYU-educated judge with two decades of experience on the bench, isn’t ignorant of the concept of market value and wrote
seven pages earlier in the same ruling that “courts have long found that ‘generally, it is the ‘market value’ which provides the most reliable valuation for assessment purposes.’”
Seemingly oblivious to his own words, Mr. Engoron ruled that Mr. Trump was
liable for fraud in part
because ”the Palm Beach County Assessor appraised the market value of Mar-a-Lago at between $18 million and $27.6 million,” while Mr. Trump valued it “at between $426,529,614 million and $612,110,496, an overvaluation of
at least 2,300 percent, compared to the assessor’s appraisal.”
Highlighting the absurdity of Engoron’s accusation, CNN
reported statements from a business scholar and several industry leaders stressing the difference between tax appraisals and market values. Here are just two of the seven statements:
“‘Appraisal values and market values are just not the same thing. It’s a well-known fact,’ said Eli Beracha, chair of the school of real estate at Florida International University. ‘That’s especially true for properties that are unique. And it’s very easy to argue this is a unique property.’”
“Dina Goldentayer, executive director of sales at Douglas Elliman in South Florida, said in her experience in the ultra-luxury marketplace the tax assessor’s valuation isn’t considered when trying to value a property. ‘He wouldn’t make a very good realtor,’ Goldentayer said of the judge. ‘It’s so widely known that it’s not an accurate determination of market value.’”
Moreover, the New York Post
documented with data from the Palm Beach real estate market that “Mar-a-Lago is worth at least $300 million and that is likely to go up exponentially after dissecting the entire estate.”
PolitiFact Covers for Engoron
Consistent with the facts of this matter,
Republican attorney Mike Davis called Engoron’s valuation of Mar-a-Lago “ludicrous” in a video posted to Facebook.
In response,
PolitiFact published a “fact check” claiming that Davis’ statement is “false” because Mr. Engoron “didn’t value Mar-a-Lago at $18 million. A Palm Beach property appraiser did.”
The glaring flaw of PolitiFact’s claim is that the appraiser didn’t actually assess the
market value of Mar-a-Lago, as Mr. Engoron alleged. PolitiFact’s
article, written by Amy Sherman, obscures this vital fact by removing the phrase “market value” from Engoron’s statement.
Sherman also makes it difficult for her readers to discover what Mr. Engoron actually wrote. She does this by linking to the
first page of his ruling, while the relevant words are on
page 26, and the document is not searchable.
Because Facebook
uses PolitiFact as one of its cherry-picked fact checkers, Davis’ post
was ”flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation.” Facebook then used this flag to
reduce the reach of Davis’ post.
The Stakes
New York Attorney General Letitia James—a
Democrat who
campaigned for this position on a promise to prosecute Mr. Trump and remove him from office—brought this case against him. Her
press release claims that “Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars,” and thus, she is asking the court to:
- “remove Trump and his children from their roles at the Trump Organization.”
- “ban them from future leadership roles in New York.”
- “force them to repay $250 million they illegally obtained.”
This isn’t just about Mar-a-Lago. Both Ms. James and Mr. Engoron, who is also a
Democrat, are accusing Mr. Trump of inflating the values of many of his assets. This threatens Trump’s entire enterprise.
Mr. Engoron has already begun to give Ms. James what she asked for. In the same ruling where Mr. Engoron misrepresented the market value of Mar-a-Lago, he also
ordered that all of the Trump Organization’s New York business certificates be “canceled” and made plans for the businesses to be dissolved.
Per the
Associated Press, “Engoron is poised to permanently disrupt the collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that vaulted Trump to fame and the White House.”
In the ruling, Mr. Engoron wrote that NY law gives him the
authority to cancel Trump’s business licenses and hold him liable for fraud
without any proof that he intentionally inflated the value of his properties. All that is necessary,
writes Mr. Engoron, is proof that Mr. Trump repeatedly conducted business with “false and misleading” financial information.
Under that standard, Mr. Engoron himself committed fraud by severely undervaluing Mar-a-Lago. Furthermore, several facts suggest that Mr. Engoron did this deliberately. These include Engoron’s own words about the legal importance of market value, the widely known difference between market and appraised value, and Engoron’s decades-long tenure as a judge.
In summary, two powerful New York Democrats are trying to strip the Trump family of their wealth by using a patent falsehood. In conjunction, PolitiFact is providing cover for the judge, and Facebook is using this bogus “fact check” to keep the facts of this matter from the public.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
