ACCORDING TO TRUMP, WE HAVE “LYIN’ TED” & “CROOKED HILLARY”, I’M ADDING: “LYIN’ TRUMP”

…The Award winning author, Timothy L. O’Brien, author of Trump Nation

 

This legal interrogation was unlike anything in the public record of Donald Trump’s life

 

I occasionally get a question from my readers as to, “Why are you always writing about Donald Trump?”

 

Well, the easy answer is that when a single individual offers so much juicy material to write about, you then know why the mainstream media writers say that Donald Trump was the greatest gift to political pundits since Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, all combined.

 

Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has sought to make his bogus truth-telling a selling point. He has nicknamed his main Republican primary opponent “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz. He calls his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, “A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR!” in a recent Tweet. “I will present the facts plainly and honestly,” he said in the opening of his speech at the Republican National Convention. “We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

 

Well, some key writers at the Washington Post decided to go back a few years to when Donald Trump was actually forced to tell the truth under oath. 

 

This occurred in a law suit that Trump had actually brought himself.  Trump obviously didn’t realize that in this law suit, he could be required to testify in a deposition under oath

 

I think you will find it interesting to see the name that Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton, that same name could easily be applied even more so, to Mr. Trump himself.

 

The basis of the law suit in question was in 2005, when Timothy L. O’Brien wrote the book “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.”

 

O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published the book.  In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned the bedrock of Trump’s identity.  That being that Trump claimed that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people close to Trump who estimated that the figure was actually between $150 million and $250 million.

 

Because of that statement, Trump decided to sue O’Brien. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlife sleazebag.”

 

But Donald obviously didn’t realize that he would be called on to be deposed ”under oath”.

 

Here are a few examples of what went on in those depositions:

 

The lawyer for O’Brien started by handing Donald Trump a note, written in Trump’s own handwriting. He asked Trump to read it aloud. Trump obviously did not realized that he had just walked into a trap.

 

“Peter, you’re a real loser,” Trump began reading.  Trump had sent the note to the reporter, objecting to a story that said Trump owned a “small minority stake” in a Manhattan real estate project.

 

Trump had insisted that the word “small” was incorrect. Trump continued reading: “I wrote: ‘Is 50% small?’ ” 

 

“This note was intended to indicate that you had a 50% stake in the project, correct?” said the lawyer.  “That’s correct,” Trump said.

 

For the first of many times that day, Trump was about to be caught in a lie.

.

O’Brien’s lawyer asked: “Mr. Trump, do you own 30% or 50% of the limited partnership?”

 

Trump: “I own 30%.” 

 

This was the start of an interrogation unlike anything else in the public record of Trump’s life.

 

O’Brien’s attorneys included a lawyer that is now the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and another attorney that today is the SEC’s Director of Enforcement. The lawsuit had given them the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used all of them. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the actual truth.

 

The questions began with that handwritten note and the 50% stake that wasn’t 50%.

 

“The 30% equates to much more than 30%,” Trump explained. His reasoning was that he had not been required to put up money at the outset, so his 30% share seemed more valuable.

 

“Are you saying that the real estate community would interpret your interest to be 50%, even though in limited partnership agreements it’s 30%?” he was asked.

 

“Smart people would,” Trump said

 

“Smart people?”

 

“Smart people would say it’s much more than 30%.”

 

As usual, Trump had brought all this on himself. He had sued the reporter, accused him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables when they brought Trump in for the deposition.

 

For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty, or lack there of.

 

The lawyers confronted the mogul with many of his past statements, and with his company’s own internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or totally invented. The lawyers were relentless.

 

Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was highly vulnerable and was cornered, out-prepared and under oath.  They caught him 30 times in lies.

 

Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings.  He even inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. He also overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.

 

That deposition became 170 transcribed pages that offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s lack of relationship with the truth.

 

Here is how Trump fantasizes his idea of the truth:

 

“I was paid more than a million dollars,” Trump said when the lawyer asked how much he’d been paid for a speech in 2005 at New York City’s Learning Annex, a continuing-education center.

 

The lawyer was ready.  “But how much of the payments were cash?”

 

“Approximately $400,000,” Trump said.

 

Trump said his personal math included the intangible value of publicity: The Learning Annex had advertised his speech heavily, and Trump thought that helped his brand. Therefore, in his mind he’d been paid more than $1 million, even though his actual payment was $400,000.

 

“Do you actually say that, when you publicly said you got a million dollars?” the lawyer asked.  “I don’t break it down,” Trump said.

 

What is amazing is that Trump’s falsehoods were totally un-strategic,  They were needless lies, easy to disprove. And when he was caught, Trump many times then just blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true.  In his mind, it was true because he saw the situation more positively than others did.  To him, that made it true!  Amazing!

 

“Have you ever lied in public statements about your properties?” the lawyer asked.

 

“I try and be truthful,” Trump said. “I’m no different from a politician running for office. You always want to put the best foot forward.” 

 

Now that he’s a politician, it’s gotten even worse.

 

So, Trump says he doesn’t want to be “politically correct”, then how about being truthful?

 

Trump has had the habit of telling demonstrable untruths during his presidential campaign. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded him four Pinocchio’s, 39 times, that’s the maximum a bogus statement can receive and that was just since he announced his presidential bid last summer.

 

In many cases, his statements echo those in the 2007 deposition: They are specific, checkable, and usually wrong.

 

Just look at what he has said in his campaign:

 

Trump said he opposed the Iraq War at the start. He didn’t. He said he’d never mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. He had. Trump also said the National Football League (NFL) had sent him a letter, objecting to a presidential debate that was scheduled for the same time as a football game. It hadn’t.

 

Trump recently claimed that he had seen footage, taken at a top-secret location and released by the Iranian government, showing a plane unloading a large amount of cash to Iran from the US government. He hadn’t. Trump later conceded he’d been mistaken, that he’d seen TV news video that showed a plane during a prisoner release.  But he didn’t apologize or admit that he was wrong.  Instead, he just said that he had mistaken the video.

 

It is impossible for Donald Trump to apologize.

 

But, even under the spotlight of this campaign, Trump has never had an experience quite like the deposition in December, 2007.

 

Back then, he was trapped in a room with his own prior statements and three high-powered lawyers.

 

“A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he was revealed as a routine and habitual liar,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, the person that Trump had sued.

 

The Washington Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about this deposition, listing all the times when Trump seemed to have been caught in a false or unsupported statement. The Post asked Trump whether he wanted to challenge any of those findings, and whether he had felt regret when confronted with them.

 

Trump has obviously not answered those questions.

 

I could go on and on for the whole deposition, but it’s all the same kind of stuff.

 

The interrogation finally ended after two days and Trump’s attorney made a final demand.

 

“I want the record to be crystal clear that every single word, every question, every answer, every word, is confidential,” said Trump’s attorney.

 

But in 2009, a judge totally dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011, that appeal was also denied.

 

Along the way, this once-confidential deposition became part of the public record when O’Brien’s attorneys attached it to one of their motions.

 

In a brief statement this week, Trump said he felt the lawsuit was a success, despite his total loss in court.  Trump said. “His book was a total failure and ultimately I had great success doing what I wanted to do, costing this 3^rd rate reporter a lot of legal fees.”

 

This so called, “3^rd rate reporter,” O’Brien, made a lot of money from the sale of his book on Trump, and it's still selling.  Oh, and O’Brien is now the executive editor of the very successful Bloomberg View. 

 

So, as usual, Trump got his statement about that wrong as well.

 

As to the cost of the suit to O’Brien, he has stated that the publisher and insurance companies covered the total cost of the law suit.

 

“Donald Trump lost his lawsuit and, unlike him, it didn’t cost me a penny to litigate it,” O’Brien said.

 

Nuff said.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016