In a mixture of braggadocio and stark-raving fear, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has taken to the airways to reassure New York-based businesses they will not be prosecuted under the same flimsy excuse used to prosecute former President Donald Trump. Trump has been ordered to pay $355 million in fines for allegedly falsely altering his net worth to receive favorable loan terms. In a radio interview, Hochul stated, 

“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul responded.

I’m sure that reassures everyone. 

Sarcasm aside, the statement reveals two truths unmistakable to all who have ears to hear. One, given how relatively common and non-injurious Trump‘s actions were to all involved parties, even if the charges leveled against Trump in court are accurate, the prosecution was clearly politically motivated: an attempt to harass the former president with the ultimate goal of poisoning his chances at the ballot box this November. The ruling was so bad even MSNBC has questions.

Even the not-so-inquiring minds at MSNBC struggled with that simple question. Tur started by pointing out that the law used to prosecute Trump doesn’t require there to be a victim (however bizarre that may seem):

A little bit of reporting that The Associated Press did regarding these sorts of decisions, these sorts of investigations, these trials... 

...basically they said they went back over 70 years and looked at all the cases that have been tried under this, this rule 36 or 6312, which is used here, which doesn't have to show harm done. It's not the burden. You don't have to show that anybody was hurt by your practices. There's nobody you defrauded specifically.

That may be true, if counterintuitive – but Tur also noted that nobody else had been targeted like this in over 70 years:

But they went back and they looked at cases over 70 years, I believe it was about 150 cases. And found that there was no case where there was a ban on doing business where there wasn't harm shown. So even though the threshold is harm shown in the past, it has only been used to ban someone doing business when it's been shown that somebody was hurt.
 
Say you're selling cosmetics that, that, that are poisoning you -- there's somebody that was hurt there. The cosmetics company gets banned.
 
Is this fair, to go after Donald Trump like this in this environment?

Second, Hochul couldn’t make it plainer if she tried that she is deathly afraid the financial flight seen in über-blue states such as California and New York, where billionaires all the way down to regular entrepreneurs are fleeing for more tax-friendly and business-friendly environments in which to work, will further crimp her financial base, i.e., tax dollars to suck off of people who actually earned their money. I mean, where else will the cash come for redistribution to illegal aliens and any other social engineering programs that are currently en vogue? As Grateful Calvin writes at our sister site Twitchy: 

Nope, nothing to see here. Hochul promises that they will never go after you like they did Trump. Scout's honor. Assuming you are an obedient Democrat, that is. But what about businesses run by conservatives? Are they safe from judges like Engoron?

Law professor Jonathan Turley has some further thoughts on the matter, including this quip. 

Gov. Hochul just assured businesses that there is “nothing to worry about” after the $355 million public execution of the Trump Corp. Drawing new businesses to the city is going to be about as easy as selling country estates during the French Revolution. https://t.co/W2sJ50xES0

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 18, 2024

Turley further details: 

Yet the court admitted that not a single dollar was lost by the banks from these dealings. Indeed, witnesses testified that they wanted to do more business with Trump, who was described as a “whale” client with high yield business opportunities.

Undervaluing and overvaluing property is a longstanding practice in New York real estate. The forms submitted by the Trump organization cautioned the banks to do their own estimates and the loans were paid in full and on time. Yet, the New York law used by James is a curiosity because it does not actually require a victim. Indeed, everyone can make ample profits and still allow for an investigation into “repeated fraudulent or illegal acts.”

Turley ends with this money quote:

After all, if New York wants to turn Wall Street into a remake of “The Hunger Games,” it has only itself to blame as other businesses flee the state.

The case is none too loosely tied into Tesla/Space X/X head honcho Elon Musk's decision to move his businesses presently headquartered in Delaware to a different state in order to avoid that state’s attempted punitive measures against his financial compensation packages. Since when it was the legal system’s business to determine private enterprise’s pay scales escapes everybody. Nevertheless, there it is. 

So, there you have it. A naked admission New York’s selective prosecution against Trump was politically motivated, combined with a plea not to allow this witch hunt to become a motivation for other businesses to pack up and move elsewhere where the environment is far more friendly and inviting. For example, Florida. I wonder if it has anything to do with the respective governorships of Florida and New York …