You can have a reasonable disagreement on whether boot camps are effective. But someone who states that the Government hates children and is a death cult is a bad faith extremist. They’re the equivalent of someone on the right who thinks Jacinda did vaccine mandates because she is paid by Pfizer. Crazy conspiracy theorists.

But Professor Kidman is not some random person. She is the co-director of He Whenua Taurikura, a supposed charity that is funded mainly by the Government. Their parent body’s postal address is the Dept of PM and Cabinet.

And what is He Whenua Taurikura? It is “New Zealand’s National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism”

Hmmm violent extremism. Wouldn’t calling the Government a death cult that hates children actually inspire violent extremism? I mean if you really thought that, then surely violence is warranted if the Government is akin to Pol Pot.

I think I’ve found another area where Nicola Willis can save some money.

Tova O’Brien writes:

As every single major political party has taught us while in opposition, you can only get elected or have any hope of convincing people you’re worthy of their votes, if your caucus is unified.

While Labour MPs – actually in the parliament – are holding it together by a thread, it’s former MPs who are starting to create fissures in the facade of unity and raise the spectre of another long stint in the wilderness of opposition for the left.

It’s Nash vs Kiri and Willie!

But this very public fight – debate warranted or not – feels distinctly like a harbinger of things to come.

More bad polls for Chris Hipkins and Labour could very well see the scrap boiling over from former MPs to current ones and what usually follows then, are questions over leadership.

That’s when the opposition death spiral truly begins.

The last Prime Minister to retain their leadership for the next election after losing was Mike Moore in 1990.

The Herald reports:

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has revealed the Government wants to exempt some trusts from paying the new 39 per cent trustee tax rate. …

However, the industry group Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand repeatedly made the point that most trusts earn less than $180,000 a year, so taxing them at the rate applied to individuals’ income above $180,000 would be unfair.

It noted that according to Inland Revenue, only 11 per cent of the trusts required to make disclosures in the 2022 tax year received taxable income above $180,000.

The group accepted it was “entirely fair” for these trusts to be taxed at 39 per cent, noting they earned a whopping 81 per cent of the income.

However, it believed applying the 39 per cent rate across the board would cause “significant collateral damage”.

Taxing all trusts at 39% would be unfair.

The best policy would be to drop the top tax rate to 33% of course. But until that happens, then a two their trust tax rate may be the best option.

This shows the latest data from Stats NZ. The amount of alcohol in New Zealand has not been increasing, in fact it decreases year after year. In fact it is 15% lower per adult than 13 years ago.

This is what happens when Google programs it AI to foster diversity. Google has now suspended this function.

Chris Bishop has released a paper on Housing he took to Cabinet. Some key extracts:

• My goal is to flood urban housing markets for Tier 1 and 2 Councils with land for development. Abundant zoned and serviced land within and at the edge of our cities for housing will moderate land prices and increase competition among land-owners to stop land banking
• Pricing should play a greater role in infrastructure funding. Growth bottlenecks have emerged precisely where prices do not reflect costs. Infrastructure should earn sufficient lifetime revenue from service charges to recover its whole-of-life costs.
• Communities are more likely to support housing growth if they share in its benefits. Under existing funding rules, water and roads infrastructure in developments may be partly funded by existing ratepayers. This acts as a disincentive for Councils to approve new subdivisions. I intend to report back on options to improve Council incentives for growth, including potentially sharing a portion of the GST from developments with Councils.
• Land protection can dramatically lower infrastructure costs by purchasing options to buy land years before developments begin. For example, a recent study by the Infrastructure Commission found land for the North-South Opaheke Arterial in Auckland would cost $78 million if purchased today, but would cost an estimated $1 billion if purchased immediately before the start of the development.

Looks like a great work programme.

An outrageous decision. A case could be made if generous for the discharge without conviction, but to grant name suppression is disgusting.

Heh, very clever.

You can donate to an appeal against this sentence here.

A fascinating article by John Gibson who reveals that the data reported widely in the media that NZ had negative excess mortality was in fact wrong, as it did not take into account population growth.

This graph shows the difference between what was reported, and how it looks adjusted for population. Still better than many countries but around equal to Denmark, Germany and Belgium and higher than Luxembourg, Canada, the Netherlands, Iceland, Israel and Australia.

Danyl McLauchlan writes:

Modern politics is riddled with principal-agent problems. When I talk to people about Let’s Get Wellington Moving – the doomed, now cancelled $7.4 billion mega infrastructure project that only delivered a pedestrian crossing while it spent $100,000 a week on consultants – they describe a very Jarndyce-like process. Endless rounds of consultation and engagement between the regional, city and central government and other stakeholders, all facilitated by private sector providers gorging themselves on those consulting fees. The principals were the ratepayers and taxpayers, who wanted their rates and taxes to go towards building stuff – but this wasn’t in the interests of the agents managing the rounds of consultation and planning. They benefited by keeping the Jarndyce loop rolling.

One of the reasons people on the left believe states outperform markets at allocating resources is that there’s lots of zero-sum competition in free market economies. Everyone is wasting money conducting marketing campaigns against one another, suing each other, new inventions can’t be shared because inventors want to protect their copyright. Under socialism the state can just put all its resources into creating value. But a classic right-wing critique of the state is that if a company in a free market makes bad decisions and destroys too much value they’ll fail and go out of business, whereas badly run public sector organisations can just fail, and fail in perpetuity – they always have the resources of the state to draw upon to fail some more. New Zealand seems to have found a way to combine both failure modes simultaneously: public sector organisations locked into zero-sum processes that destroy value – they spend a fortune on marketing! – but can’t ever go bankrupt.  

A rare achievement.

If you looked at the under-examined assumptions behind Ardernism I suspect a strong belief in the infallibility of state bureaucracies would lie at the heart of it: any problem can be solved if you give the experts running the relevant ministry more money and tell them to be kind. 

A good summary.

One of the reasons our neoliberal revolution failed to generate the wealth its advocates promised is that markets aren’t magical. They need regulation to function properly: otherwise, you just wind up with an economy dominated by monopolies and cartels, ie the New Zealand economy.

I agree regulation is often needed for markets, but the challenge is getting the degree of regulation right. Stopping vertically integrated monopolies is a good thing for example.

Radio NZ report:

Police now have two years worth of data on the types of hate incidents reported across New Zealand – including regional breakdowns and the demographics targeted – but it’s unclear when the country will make hate crimes a standalone offence, nearly five years on from the Christchurch terror attacks.

The number of hate incidents reported to police has increased by 12 percent between 2022 and 2023.

Race-motivated abuse made up 83 percent of all complaints over the past two years, followed by incidents targeting people’s sexual orientation (9.7 percent), and those targeting people of a certain faith (5.8 percent).

Of the 9351 hate incidents reported between January 2022 and January 2024, more than a third targeted people of Asian descent, followed by 8.9 percent aimed at people of colour and 7.2 percent targeting Maori.

Sad but not surprising that Asian New Zealanders get the most racial abuse.

Of interest is that 11.2% of incidents were targeted at Europeans. Of course they make up the largest share of the population.

Conservation Minister Tama Påtaka announced:

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has made the reinstatement of the walking access to Coromandels Cathedral Cove/Te Whanganui-a-Hei before next summer a priority. 

Excellent. Prior to the Minister being involved, DOC were saying they wouldn’t even make a decision on restoring access until the end of 2024. Now a few weeks later, the Minister has obviously told them this is unacceptable, and it will be reopened.

This is just one of many benefits of a change of Government. The former Minister just let DOC spend 12 months deciding to do nothing.

“I expect to receive advice from officials by the end of June on the reinstatement options. Assuming there is a safe option for public walking access, I want to see the mahi procured and underway ahead of summer.

Of course there are safe options. Safe is not the same as risk free. If one allows any potential of risk to dictate access, then we would have no walking tracks anywhere!

So the battle isn’t won. Having the Minister make access a priority helps immensely, but the power of bureaucratic inertia should not be underestimated!

The Herald reports:

Stan Walker interviewed Ziggy Marley for Seven Sharp ahead of the release of One Love, but days later all traces of it were deleted from Walker’s and the show’s social media. TVNZ reveals the reason why to the New Zealand Herald.

The camera starts rolling. Stan Walker walks into a dark room. He grins ear to ear, sits down and admits he is “really nervous” to interview controversial musician Ziggy Marley, son of Bob Marley. On screen behind them is a movie poster with the famous Rastafarian colours, promoting the new Bob Marley biopic One Love.

Kicking things off with a Māori welcome, Walker tells a smiling Ziggy, “It is an honour and a privilege to be here to interview you.” The pair then engage in a relatively wholesome interview discussing the inspiration behind One Love, a movie produced by Ziggy that tells the story of his late father and his journey to becoming the most famous reggae musician in the world.

It was an interview conducted for TVNZ’s 7pm current affairs show Seven Sharp, with the full conversation between the two musicians airing on TV earlier this month. Clips of their conversation were shared on both the show and Walker’s social media accounts.

So it was an interview between two musicians.

Days later, all traces of it were scrubbed from the internet without explanation. Now, a TVNZ spokesperson tells the NZ Herald why.

Praising Walker, the spokesperson revealed that it wasn’t the interview that resulted in the surprise decision to remove all traces of it, but rather social commentary.

“Stan Walker conducted a fantastic interview with Ziggy Marley about the new film One Love for Seven Sharp, and the piece was a hit both on-air and online,” they said. However, once the piece was uploaded to social media, comments took away from the purpose of the interview, leaving TVNZ no choice but to remove it from the Seven Sharpsocial media accounts.

“Social media commentary moved away from what the interview was about and we decided to take the piece offline,” the spokesperson said.

What this means is that they gave into a woke mob. Why?

Though the content has since been deleted, “social media commentary” can be seen on other accounts, including @palestinian.youth.aotearoa, criticising Walker for interviewing Marley. There has also been a petition launched against Marley’s headlining the upcoming Womad NZ festival.

A collective of groups – Hala.aotearoa, Artists for Ceasefire and Aotearoa for Ceasefire – is petitioning Womad to drop Marley from its lineup after he helped to raise US$60 million for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in 2018.

Great example of cancel culture. This interview wasn’t about the Middle East or Gaza. It was about music and musicians. But because he has the wrong view on Israel, they have deleted the interview.

Worth checking out Sora, the Video AI from Open AI.

You can enter a prompt such as:

A stylish woman walks down a Tokyo street filled with warm glowing neon and animated city signage. She wears a black leather jacket, a long red dress, and black boots, and carries a black purse. She wears sunglasses and red lipstick. She walks confidently and casually. The street is damp and reflective, creating a mirror effect of the colorful lights. Many pedestrians walk about.

And it creates a 60 second video of it. The ability for any person to create a realistic video on demand is fantastic.

Robert MacCulloch writes:

Our Worst Finance Minister Ever Grant Robertson (the one who created the cost-of-living crisis) wrote on his Facebook Page that “Chippy (Labour Leader Chris Hipkins) is my mate first and foremost. I worked out the other day I have known him for nearly 25 years. I was best man at his wedding”. And what do mates do for one another? Here’s what: the government appoints four members to Otago University’s Council, which in turn chooses the Vice Chancellor. On 23 December 2021, then Labour Education Minister Chris “Chippy” Hipkins appointed former Labour Party Cabinet Minister, Clare Curran, to the University of Otago Council. Yesterday, on 20 February 2024, it was announced Chippy’s mate, Grant Robertson, had been chosen by that same Council to be the next Vice Chancellor (VC), on a salary of $629,000 – Otago’s first ever non-academic VC in its 155 year history.

Few Vice Chancellor’s in the world come from non-academic backgrounds – NZ has selected several in the past, including the VC of Waikato, former UK Labour Party politician, Bryan Gould, who once ran for the Leadership of that Party (he was brought up in NZ), and Steve Maharey, a former Labour Party Minister who was VC of Massey. Seems they’re all part of the Labour Party Extended Families Association which gets “mates rates” – which in Labour’s case means higher, not lower, rates paid by you, the tax-payer, to fund their own.

Politics is about the pursuit of power; business the pursuit of money; universities the pursuit of truth. It’s a shame Otago University, with its proud history, has rejected the truth in favor of power and money. There should be a judicial enquiry into this scandalous use of public funds used to support a retiring politician who doesn’t have the energy to go on in politics (in his own words, “doesn’t have much left”), but is taking a job that requires far more energy than being an Opposition MP, at least to do it properly. Let’s wish him a happy semi-retirement (as Vice Chancellor).

I think this is a bit harsh on Grant. You can not have the energy for carrying on in politics but definitely have the energy for a new challenge outside politics.

And while I disagree with Grant on policies, I do regard him as a very competent manager of people, and can see why the Otago Council thought he would be a good VC.

But Robert touches on an interesting point. The only three non-academics appointed to be NZ Vice-Chancellors have all been Labour Party politicians.

If it is thought that ministerial experience can make a good vice-chancellor then why have we not seen any former National Ministers as VCs?

Readers will know Labour was planning to spend between $15 and $29 billion on a 24 km light rail system in Auckland that would have trains that go slower than cars.

For $14 billion China is constructing a 342 km high-speed rail line with a design speed of 350km/h!!

Egypt for the same cost is developing an 850 km electrified line with a design speed of 250 km/hr.

If the left leaning Mainstream Media globally is to be believed, former US President Donald Trump could end up in jail for many years after multiple indictments for various offences. An indictment is an American term meaning being charged with an offense of some kind. An indictment does not indicate guilt and in the context of the prosecutors doing the charging, Trump’s opponents are engaging in what is called lawfare which is a single word description for politically motivated legal cases.

Lawfare in fact is very common in 3^rd world countries and in despotic regimes. Even the most infamous dictators in history would shroud their persecution of the perceived enemies of the state behind a patina of fake legality via corrupt or co-opted judges and prosecutors. Lawfare is less common in the Anglophile Common Law and western European Roman Law democracies outside of the corporate world. The exception in the west is the US where politicised prosecutions have been commonplace because the Judiciary and the Executive branches at every level of US government are highly politicised. Understanding the process in the US is an important backdrop to understanding the current Trump lawfare.

Whilst the US Federal Constitution formally separates the three branches of government (Legislative, Executive and Judicial) with a series of counter weighing checks and balances (that are mirrored in all the States’ Constitutions), unlike the rest of the Anglophile world that follows the Westminster model, almost all US judges at every level are political appointees. The sitting President gets to appoint Federal Judges, Federal Courts of Appeal judges and of course the Justices of the Supreme Court. These appointments must be ratified by the Senate but, with some notable exceptions, unless the nominee has some glaring and provable fatal flaws, a Senate controlled by the opposing party of the President usually ends up confirming the President’s choices. This is mirrored at the State level with the sitting Governor appointing State Appeal and State Supreme Court judges and usually the Superior Court judges in larger cities with some states mirroring the Federal system with a state Senate confirmation process. Elected County Supervisors oversee the appointment of County court judges and elected Mayors usually nominate Municipal or City Court judges. There are some jurisdictions that have merit panels staffed by lawyers and ex-judges and all state, county and municipal judges are subject to confirmation election by voters every 2 years at each Presidential and mid term election. Bad judges who make high profile seen to be incorrect decisions or who become embroiled in controversy and won’t resign, can and are voted out of office. In addition to the partisan judges are the partisan prosecutors, the most notable being District Attorneys. Most crimes are handled at the county and city level and charges are normally brought by DAs offices in County or Municipal courts. District Attorneys operate at either the County or City level, but they are an elected position and almost all DAs have a partisan political affiliation. Left leaning cities/counties elect Democrat DAs and right leaning cities and counties elect Republican DAs.

It is known that the incoming President selects his Cabinet from the ranks of parochial allies. Ditto at the State level, the Governor appoints departmental heads although in most states, the most high-profile State government positions are elected. What is less known is that the politicisation of the bureaucracy goes three layers deep below the level of Cabinet Secretary (equivalent of a NZ Cabinet Minister). On average the Federal Government in Washington DC has over 30,000 political appointees that change when an Administration is voted out of office. There simply is no equivalent of this level of politicisation in any other 1^st world democracy.

American history is rife with examples of the law enforcement controlled by one party attempting to bring down politically motivated prosecutions against their political opponents. What is different with the Trump cases is that he is the first ex-President to be indicted and the sheer scale of the lawfare is also unprecedented.

Why are the Democrats engaging in lawfare on this scale with Trump?

1 – To tie Trump up in court to interfere with his ability to campaign,

2 – To financially drain him with civil fines that encroach on his financial empire and campaign funds,

3 – To try to make him electorally toxic because of possible prosecutions,

4 – To try and get Trump removed from the ballot in the 2024 Presidential election and

5 – To force him to give up and retire to avoid all of the above.

Generally speaking, prior attempts at lawfare usually results in success for the party of the prosecutors hence why it is undertaken. However, Trump is no ordinary politician as we shall see.

The seven lawfare cases being brought against Trump divide into 3 distinct categories and I will examine each one in summary and the likelihood of success in each case. I will cover the 14^th Amendment and two civil cases in Part 1 and I will cover the four criminal indictments in Part 2. All seven cases have the same modus operandi in terms of the tactics used by Trump’s political opponents:

First – The judges presiding over each case (with one exception) have been carefully chosen for their impeccable left-wing credentials. They are all appointees of Democrat Presidents or Governors. They have a track record of being hyper partisan and have previously presided over lopsided politically motivated trials giving verdicts and sentences that have been crafted to damage or restrict a Republican or right leaning defendant.

Second – Like the judges, the prosecutors have also been hand selected for their hyper partisan biased ideologically left leaning orientations and have also been appointed by Democrat Presidents or Governors. In all cases, the prosecutors have previously brought notoriously partisan, exaggerated and even trumped up (excuse the pun) charges.

1 – 14^th AMENDMENT CASES

Various Democrat elected officials in a number of states have attempted to use section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution which states that at any candidate that “has engaged in insurrection or rebellion” shall be barred from office. The amendment was passed after the Civil War ostensibly to bar successionists from seeking federal office. On the premise that Trump supposedly incited rebellion on January 6^th 2021, his opponents feel this clause should apply.

Democrat Secretaries of State or County Supervisors who oversee the administration of election ballots at the state and county level and who also oversee relevant state election laws, ruled Trump was ineligible under this clause and then attempted to remove him from their ballots for first their Republican primaries and then the General Election in November. Trump’s campaign or local Republican party organisations sued in local courts to oppose these measures. In thirteen states (Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming), these attempts were ruled against by state Appellate or Supreme courts on the grounds that Trump has never been convicted of the offense of insurrection. He was not convicted in his second impeachment trial by the Senate on this matter and even in the January 6^th related charges he faces in Federal Court brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith (discussed in Part 2), Trump was not formally charged with any Federal insurrection indictments. It is important to note that even Democrat appointed judges in liberal states have ruled against these attempts which underscores the flimsiness of the arguments.

However, the Democrat controlled Colorado Supreme Court overruled the decision of the Colorado Court of Appeal that threw out the case forcing Trump to appeal to Federal court. Given the explosive potential of this issue, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agreed to immediately take up the case directly rather than have it go through the two prior layers of Federal appellate courts. Similarly, the Maine Secretary of State has ruled Trump ineligible, and that case is pending the outcome of the Colorado Supreme Court v Trump case at SCOTUS. Just yesterday a Democrat Cook County (covering metropolitan Chicago) circuit judge in Illinois has just removed Trump from that county’s GOP Primary ballot.

How will the Colorado case fare do you think? Well various legal analysts on both sides of the political fence who read the tea leaves from the SCOTUS appearance of both legal counsel teams were pretty united in stating how weak the Colorado case was, how it poorly it was argued and that the aggressive questioning of the Colorado attorneys from even the three reliable liberals on the Court portent a lopsided defeat for the Colorado case. The only argument is whether it will be a 0 – 9 or 1 – 8 ruling. Once ruled on at SCOTUS, the Maine and Illinois attempts will be dropped and that will end this “Hail Mary” attempt to remove Trump from ballots.

2 – CIVIL CASES

(i) E Jean Carroll defamation suit

E Jean Carroll is an 80-year-old former Elle Magazine advice columnist from New York City who, in a column in New York Magazine in 2019, accused Donald Trump of raping her in a dressing room at prestigious Bergdorf-Goodman Department store in NYC sometime in the mid-1990s. As it turned out, the NY Police Department never pressed any criminal charges of rape or sexual assault against Trump because Carroll never made a formal complaint to the NYPD despite there being no statute of limitations on historical criminal rape cases and even after being invited to by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (3′ 20″). There are a number of compelling reasons why, if she had laid a police complaint, it would not lead to any charges including:

• The length of time it took for her to come forward with her claim,
• She had no witnesses to the fact that Trump and she were together in the store,
• Her description of the dressing room was so inaccurate making her claim logistically impossible,
• There was no CCTV footage of Trump entering the store,
• When questioned, Carroll couldn’t even remember what year the alleged incident happened,
• Carroll was unable to recall ever telling any friends or family about such a momentous event,
• The designer dress suit by Donna Karen that Carroll claimed to have been wearing at the time of the alleged attack was made several years later according to NY Times fact checkers ,
• Carroll claimed to have had the dress forensically tested and yet during the defamation hearing, she never brought the dress or the test into evidence nor pushed for Trump to provide a DNA test to prove her claim.

Trump vehemently denied the claim and, in true Trump fashion, wryly said, “anyway, she isn’t my type”. Since Carroll made no formal criminal complaint, financially backed by Trump-hating left wing billionaire activist and  Democrat donor Reid Hoffman, Carroll embarked on a campaign to change the law in the state of New York to extend the statute of limitations for the bringing a CIVIL complaint of battery. Carroll was prominent in the campaign to change the law and on the very day after the amended law came into effect in 2022, Carroll filed a civil battery suit in the notoriously left-wing Manhattan Municipal Court where she knew she’d have a left-wing jury and a Democrat appointed judge sympathetic to her cause. She also sued Trump for defamation claiming his strenuous and aggressive denials damaged her reputation by impugning her honesty.

The trial was conducted over April and May 2023 when the sympathetic jury did indeed find Trump civilly liable for battery but specifically noted that the verdict DID NOT make a finding of guilt of rape and awarded defamation damages in the order of $83 million.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has appealed the verdict. What are the chances of him getting the verdict overturned on appeal, if not at the New York Appellate and Supreme Court but more likely at Federal Appellate Courts? Based on the following that occurred or did not occur during the trial, Trump has copious and strong grounds for a reversal of the decision on appeal:

• In any defamation defense, the truth is always the best defense and Trump has truth on his side.
• The undisclosed conflict of interest between Judge Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation) in that Lewis was Roberta’s mentor when they both worked the same Manhattan law firm.
• Carroll’s allegation bears a striking resemblance to an almost identical plot line of an episode of Law and Order: SVU, a popular US police drama set in NYC which NBC screened in 2012 some 7 years before her first public allegation.
• Perhaps the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the trial were the various times the judge ruled as inadmissible various critical pieces of evidence that proved that Carroll was sex obsessed, had stalked other high-profile businessmen and had made multiple prior false claims of rape. Some of these are shocking:

* One of the few bits of evidence allowed was a 2017 Facebook post of Carroll’s where she rhetorically asked “Would you have sex with Donald Trump for $17,000? Even if you could a) give the money to charity? b) close your eyes? And he’s not allowed to speak.”

* In a 2019 interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN after the allegations were made public, Carroll said that “most people think of rape as being sexy” and so bizarre was her conduct in the interview that Cooper immediately cut to an ad break.

* Carroll had falsely accused multiple other men of raping her including: a babysitter’s boyfriend, a dentist, a camp counselor, an unnamed college date, an unnamed boss and most significantly, Les Moonves former CEO of CBS News.

* She said on CNN in an interview “I do not know if the President ejaculated” – a most extraordinary statement for a supposed rape victim to say (see 2′ 40″)

* Carroll has tweeted a number of sexually charged Tweets that were bordering on inappropriate

Trump was allowed 3 minutes on the stand and could answer only a few selected and curated Yes No questions. Neither he nor his attorney were able to bring up any of this damning evidence as to the track record and mind set of Trump’s alleged accuser. On the fact alone that his right to proper self-defense was arbitrarily abrogated by the capricious decisions of a highly partisan Trump hating judge, this verdict will be easily overturned.

(ii) New York Attorney General fraud suit

The very definition of a politically motivated prosecution is demonstrated in the $250 million civil fraud case brought by New York State Attorney General Leticia James against Donald Trump, his sons Don Junior and Eric Trump and the Trump Organization. Letitia James literally campaigned for the AG’s office on a platform to “get Trump” and any cursory search of social media will unearth clips of James frequently bragging before mostly sympathetic Democratic audiences of her intention.

AG James alleged that Trump overvalued his assets to obtain loans from banks and to get more favourable insurance contracts that he later went on to profit from. The case was heard by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, a jurisdiction known to be very left leaning and hostile to Trump. In addition, Engoron’s wife posted a series of nasty anti-Trump memes on social media and when Trump made appearances in court, Engoron was visibly hostile to Trump and ended up fining him twice for contempt of court after Trump breached gagging orders from speaking publicly about the case.

Engoran found, without any jury trial (extremely rare for a case so large), that the Trumps had indeed committed fraud and so the trial was held merely to decide on the amount of the fine. It is clear from the penalty handed down ($355 million) that Engoron had already made up his mind to do the bidding of AG James by attempting to destroy the Trump’s New York base of business with not just punitive fines but a 3 year ban on doing business in the state of New York and applying for loans in the state.

Trump has commenced the appeal process, in and of itself financially onerous because the court will impose a 10% interest loading taking the total penalty to be allowed on appeal to $450 million. Whilst Trump is wealthy enough to pay this, it would drain his cash reserves and likely require the fire sale of assets. The most likely pathway he will take is to use a court Bond to cover the fine plus interest where normally he only has to find 10% of the amount being bonded or $45 million. That still hurts but is more doable for Trump.

What is the likelihood of this punitive award and the onerous restrictions surviving an appeal? Not high because of the unusual features of this case, setting aside the obvious political bias. These include:

* the fact that all New York based real estate developers to some extent exaggerate their net worth when applying for loans. It is actually a global practice. It is why banks and lenders rely on their own estimates of property values and it’s why properties used as security for large commercial loans are independently valued and the banks make a decision on the amount to advance and terms based on such independent valuations. All of the loans that Trump obtained were issued on that basis.

* This case is probably the world’s first fraud case where there is no defrauded party. Indeed, every single loan and insurance product that Trump obtained using his Statements of Position were repaid on time and in full with never even so much as a missed or late payment and not a single financial institution suffering any loss at all. The notion of fraud is a victim who is out of pocket due to alleged fraudulent activity. To the contrary, various senior bank staff testified at the trial that not only was the Trump account flawless and blemish free from a banking perspective, but that Trump was considered an enormously valuable (so-called ‘whale’) client whose loan business was sought after by banks. A number of business commentators have noted this absence of any fraud loss as a major flaw in the AG’s case.

* This prosecution is utterly unique in New York legal history. Despite there being literally hundreds of high-end property developers who have built thousands of properties in the state over many decades, almost all of whom engaged in similar loan application conduct as Trump, not a single case of fraud of this nature has ever been brought. A number of financial commentators have remarked that this verdict will have an enormously chilling effect on the property development market in the state as developers will move their sights, funding and projects to states less hostile to entrepreneurial development activity.

* Judge Engoron ruled that Trump’s Statements of Position were fraudulent. Trump’s lawyers brought to the stand Eli Bartov, a renowned accounting professor of the Stern Business School at NYU who said of Trump’s financial statements submitted to get loans, “I’ve never seen a statement that provides so much detail and is so transparent. The footnotes provide an awesome amount of information.”

* Perhaps the single most staggeringly biased and ill-judged decision in this whole case, and on which perhaps alone would be ground for appeal, was the decision of Engoron to value Trump’s flagship property in Palm Beach, Florida (Mar-a-Largo) at a miniscule $18 million basing this off the Palm Beach County property tax valuation as an exhibit of the type of over valuation ‘fraud’ that he claimed Trump engaged in.

In order to understand the sheer ineptitude and blatant bias of this valuation, some knowledge of Palm Beach and its unique real estate is important.  First off, as in NZ, local government property tax valuations (like the ratable value used by QV in NZ for what was commonly called the GV or Government Valuation and used for basing local council rates) are almost always well below market value, sometimes massively so.

Palm Beach is one of the most prestigious addresses in all of the US and of the highest value are properties in the southern and most narrow part of the long thin island that comprises Palm Beach that are large enough to straddle the width of the island and thus have a frontage on the Atlantic Ocean beach and the Lake Worth Lagoon between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach on the mainland. Indeed, the name of Trump’s property Mar-a-Largo means “sea to lake” in Spanish. Mar-a Largo is one of a handful of properties with this unique feature.

Trump paid $7 million for the property in 1985, admittedly in a distressed sale situation, and added a 20,000 sq ft (2,000m²) ballroom to the 17-acre (almost 7 ha) site making the total size of the buildings 62,500 sq ft (6,250 m²). It has extensive facilities as befitting a large luxury country club with pools, tennis courts and private access to the beach and lagoon. In 2018 Forbes magazine estimated the value at $350 million and upped that estimate to $500 million in 2022.

As an example of the massive prices being asked for properties in this part of Palm Beach, a property 2 miles (3 kms) south of Mar-a-Largo on Ocean Boulevard is on the market for $174 million for a house size of only 18,000 sq ft (1,800 m²) and on a section about ¼ the size of Mar-a-Largo. Famous prominent top end Palm Beach real estate agent Lawrence Moens is said to have told Trump he’d list MAL for $750 million.  Letitia James charged Trump with fraud saying he spruiked the value by $250 million and that was her fraud claim above Judge Engoron’s claimed value of $18 million. For $18 million you might be able to buy the garden shed of one the houses in this area!

Aside from the massively chilling impact a verdict like this will have on New York property development, expert legal and real estate opinion on the verdict has been scathing:

* MSNBC (a left wing cable network implacably opposed to Trump) Legal Analyst Lisa Rubin quoted an Associated Press analysis of all historical fraud cases brought in the state of New York going back 75 years and found not a single precedent for Engoron’s penalty given there was no proven or even victim claimed fraud loss..

* A prominent Palm Beach real state broker told the NY Post “It’s utterly delusional to think that property is only worth $18 million.”

* Esteemed legal commentator Jonathon Turley, Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, wrote an excoriating assessment of Engoron’s penalties in “The Hill” where he stated, “The damages in my view are excessive and absurd after the court acknowledged that no one lost a dime in these exchanges. Indeed, the “victims” wanted to do more business with Trump and made handsome profits,” and later on he opines on the fate of this verdict, “The size of the damages is grotesque and should shock the conscience of any judge on appeal. Even if the Democrat-appointed judges on the New York Court of Appeals were to ignore the obvious inequity and unfairness, the United States Supreme Court could intervene.”

* Acclaimed Constitutional Historian Victor Davis Hansen agreed with Trump that the massive fine likely violates the 8^th Amendment against excessive fines.

* Professor Steven Calabresi of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law commented in Reason magazine: “Ms. James and Judge Engeron have essentially turned a vaguely worded New York State law into a modern day Bill of Attainder targeted at Donald Trump both for political gain and because they despise his political views and desperately want to call his truthfulness into question as he runs for President of the United States in 2024. In doing this, they have violated Trump’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and of the press; his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law; his Fifth Amendment right not to have property taken away from him except for a public use with just compensation being paid; his Eighth Amendment right not to be made to pay an excessive fine; his Article IV, Section 2 right as a citizen of Florida to do, make, and enforce contracts in New York on the same terms as are other New Yorkers; and his Fourteenth Amendment right to be free to pursue an occupation without unnecessary and burdensome regulation.”

I’ll end this analysis with two great ironies:

1 – Facing a hostile backlash from New York business owners and property magnates, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the quiet part out loud. In trying to reassure this skeptical audience that NY had not become a hostile place to do business, she claimed that no one ought to fear this verdict because it was unique against Trump further sealing the fact that this was a political witch hunt.

2 – Lest any Trump supporters among you fear that Trump may yet lose appeals and be stripped of $500 million of his worth, in the same week of the verdict, the SEC cleared the path for Trump’s popular social media platform Truth Social from previous market capital raising restrictions thus catapulting, with the stroke of a pen, the value of Trump’s holding in Truth Social to around $6.5 billion

These civil fraud cases are particular darlings of the left and the Never Trump RINOs but they will never amount to a hill of beans in their ability to stop Trump from running for the Presidency.

In Part 2 I will cover the four criminal indictments.

Stuff reports:

When leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins joined broadcaster Sean Plunket on radio outlet, The Platform, on Wednesday, it seemed a strange fit for the leader of the Labour Party.

The Platform is an online radio station that was founded by former Magic Talk broadcaster Sean Plunket in 2022. The station describes itself as an “independent digital media site” which does not “take your tax payer dollars through government funded agencies”. It promotes itself as a space to “receive and impart views and opinions the mainstream media simply cannot handle”.

While rare, it wasn’t the first time Hipkins had spoken to Plunket on the station. Plunket introduced his morning guest by saying it had been “a while between drinks”, and that Hipkins had “become and un-become prime minister”.

While mostly cordial, there was a bit of back and forth when Plunket suggested the Labour party was too “woke” for middle New Zealand and that the Labour Government “tended to cancel and de-platform people” and was “far from tolerant of people ideologically different from it”. Both claims Hipkins denied.

It seems weird for Stuff to publish an entire article on the fact Chris Hipkins was interviewed on The Platform.

The Spinoff’s readership is very left leaning, but no one suggests the National MPs should refuse to talk to them.

It is in fact smart to do media interviews with outlets that are not ideologically friendly to you. You get challenged in a way, you won’t with other media. It actually gives you a chance to confront issues that many NZers care about, but are not generally put to MPs.

The Herald reports:

The Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel on Wednesday said it has found evidence of “systematic and intentional” rape and sexual abuse during the Hamas attack on October 7 that ignited the war in Gaza.

The report said the attacks were more widespread than earlier thought, taking place at a series of locations across southern Israel.

“In some cases, rape was conducted in front of an audience, such as partners, family or friends, to increase the pain and humiliation for all present,” it said.

Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of the association, said in many cases, the bodies of male and female victims, including their genitals, were severely mutilated.

An Associated Press investigation also found sexual assault was part of an atrocity-filled rampage by Palestinian militant group Hamas and others who killed about 1200 people, most of them civilians, and took around 250 hostages on October 7. Hamas has rejected allegations its gunmen committed sexual assault.

People who deny Hamas were responsible for mass rapes should be treated as having as much credibility as those who deny the Holocaust.

The Herald reports:

Two government water reform chief executives have taken redundancy payouts of $355,000 apiece, while a third has “transitioned” to another water reform job within the Department of Internal Affairs, now under review.

Jon Lamonte and Colin Crampton both left their posts on December 15 with redundancy packages worth six months’ of their $710,000 “establishment chief executive” base salaries. They were each on the job for just 10 months.

Bizarrely, a third chief executive, Vaughan Payne, took up a new post, focused on the last iteration of the Labour-era reforms, on December 20, six days after the new Cabinet formally decided to legislate to repeal and replace that plan.

A department spokesman said Payne’s new job, regional establishment director, was agreed to in September, before the October 14 election, under the water reform law of the time.

Signing such a contract a few days before the election was wrong. The responsible thing would have been to delay any significant contractural obligations.

The Herald reports:

About $16.5 million will have been spent by June on what to do about over-tourism in Milford Sound, but Tourism Minister Matt Doocey says the work has been, at times, “incoherent”. Are we about to see very little change after so much money over more than seven years? Derek Cheng reports. …

One of the plan’s key proposals is to put most of the 5000 to 6000 people a day on buses, starting in Te Anau. There would be several places of interest – to be developed – along the Milford SH94 corridor where the buses would stop.

Other suggestions include banning cruise ships and fixed-wing aircraft, which some tourism operators fear would see them go belly-up.

So Labour spent $17 million on a working group, whose answer was to ban people being able to drive, fly or cruise to Milford Sound!

Tourism is a huge part of our economy, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Making it harder for people to access our most popular tourist destination is as daft as refusing to reopen the track to our second most popular one.

The obvious answer is infrastructure upgrades.