March 11, 2022 Francis Menton
From time to time on this blog I have had occasion to note the extent to which many of the seemingly “smartest” people in our society time and again fall hook, line and sinker for the most preposterous mass hysterias. When it really counts, the people who have risen to the very top ranks of our social hierarchies prove to have no critical thinking capabilities whatsoever. For some entertaining reading about various self-made billionaires, former cabinet secretaries, and the like, making utter fools of themselves, you might try my posts from February 9, 2017 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’ — Part III”), or June 25, 2014 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’”). Both of those posts dealt with the topic of attempts to alter world temperatures through government taxation and spending.
A recent example of the phenomenon of the smart dopes now comes forth from the District Attorney’s office of New York County — that is, the people here in Manhattan charged with the enforcement of the New York State criminal laws. In this instance the subject of the hysteria was the idea that Donald Trump, President of the United States, needed to be charged with some sort of violations of the New York criminal law arising out of his business dealings.
Although prosecutors don’t publicly announce when they start investigations, it is clear from various court filings along the way (e.g., Trump’s lawyers opposing enforcement of subpoenas) that the DA’s criminal investigation of Trump was well underway as early as 2019, that is, in the middle of Trump’s term as President. The Manhattan DA at the time was Cyrus Vance, Jr. If you are old enough, you will recognize from Vance’s name that he is the son of the Cyrus Vance who was Secretary of State when Jimmy Carter was President, and also at various times Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, and other such government positions, in between stints as big-time partner of big-time law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Background on the Trump criminal investigation by Vance Jr.’s office can be found in this New York Times piece from February 18, 2021. That piece, written less than a month after Mr. Trump left office, already described the criminal investigation as “long running.” According to the piece, the investigation was “focused on possible tax and bank-related fraud,” and most particularly on “whether the Trump Organization misled its lenders” as to “the value of his properties to obtain loans.”
Now, you may not be one of the world’s great geniuses, but does the subject of this investigation make any sense to you? I’ll bet that before you finished reading that one little paragraph you had asked yourself at least three critical questions:
Since when do banks take the borrower’s word for the value of real estate when they make loans secured by the property? When you took out your mortgage for a lousy one or a few hundred thousand, the bank did an appraisal of the value of the property. Could it really be that banks lent Trump hundreds of millions and just took his word for the value of the property without doing their own appraisal?
Did Trump default on any of the loans? If he had, it would have led the news for months on end; so no, that did not happen. Who has ever heard of such a thing as a criminal prosecution for overvaluing the collateral for a loan when the loan has always been and remains current and never in default?
Didn’t the real estate market experience tremendous appreciation throughout the U.S. from 2010 through the ensuing decade? Given that, wouldn’t exaggerated valuations early in the period therefore look prescient in hindsight?
So you might think, perhaps this investigation was being conducted by some naive young Assistant DAs with little understanding of how the real world works. Wrong. Instead, Vance had recruited two of the very biggest names from New York’s most prestigious law firms to head the probe. You probably have not heard of these guys, but in the world of big New York law firms, anyone would immediately recognize them as from the true nobility. Or to put it another way, these guys are really, really smart:
Carey Dunne is a Harvard Law School graduate, and was a long-time senior partner of the Davis Polk law firm. You may recognize the name of John W. Davis as the Democratic nominee for President in both 1920 and 1924 and also, in his spare time, as the personal lawyer to J.P. Morgan. The Davis Polk law firm continues to represent Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase in many matters to this day. Dunne has also served a term as President of the New York City Bar Association, a kind of ultimate recognition of status in the elite New York legal community. In 2016 Dunne left Davis Polk to join Vance’s DA office as General Counsel, and apparently got named to head the investigation of Trump some time thereafter. Here is a picture of Dunne:
Mark Pomerantz was a long-time partner of the Paul Weiss law firm who joined the investigation of Trump in 2021. Among the very top New York law firms, Paul Weiss is the one most heavily devoted to the litigation practice. In his career Pomerantz had, among other things, been the head of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Pomerantz came out of retirement to join the Trump investigation, and according to the New York Times, agreed to do so without pay. Here is a picture of Pomerantz:
As you can see, these guys are the crème de la crème of the New York legal community. On the other hand, like so many other liberal New Yorkers, they are completely blinded by their hatred of Trump. It seems that in their eagerness, the three simple questions above never occurred to them.
In late February, the Manhattan DA’s offices’s investigation of Trump completely unraveled. Vance had decided not to run for re-election, and a new guy, Alvin Bragg, took office on January 1, 2022. Bragg decided he should take his own look at this, his single most high-profile criminal investigation. The New York Times has a big summary on March 5; and CNN also did a long write-up on March 6.
Brief excerpt from the Times piece:
Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.
It also seems that Bragg figured out that essentially the only evidence of Trump’s supposed criminal intent in the case was to come from the famous Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney since convicted of multiple charges unrelated to his service for Trump, and now having turned on the ex-boss.
After a series of basically hostile meetings with Bragg, both Dunne and Pomerantz resigned from the office. Although the investigation is still theoretically alive, it is expected to die when the grand jury in question ends its term in April.
Exit quote (from Dunne):
“It’s a righteous case that ought to be brought,” Mr. Dunne told Mr. Bragg.
Dunne thinks that it is “righteous” to single out a guy to investigate endlessly for years because you oppose him politically. His mania blinded him to the most obvious holes in this case. Keep that line in mind any time you find yourself starting to think that the “smartest” people should be trusted with anything.
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