So Donald Trump borrowed money from Deutsche bank regularly, consistently and systematically. It was his, for years, sole lender, and then for other years, his principal lender. And he developed real estate in New York City and elsewhere. In order to borrow the money, he pledged assets that he already owned as security for the money. Giving a mortgage, he paid back all the money that was already paid it back on time.

Government came in and demanded his books and records and said, we think that the evaluation you put on a building that you pledged as security for a loan you made ten years ago was not accurate, that you overvalued the building and therefore you cheated Deutsche Bank. Deutsche bank said, well, no, he didn’t cheat us. We sent our own appraisers out there to appraise his buildings. We never accept at face value what our clients tell us.

Except in Trump’s case, he was right. It was within a range acceptable to us. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted, right down to the penny. But it never is, because the value of real estate can change every day. What’s the value of a piece of real estate, what a willing buyer and a willing seller are willing to pay for? And that could be different today than it was last week and will be next week.

Nevertheless, the state sued him, claiming that somehow the state suffered harm because Trump overevaluated the assets that he pledged as security for the loan and persuaded a judge that Trump illicitly earned $160,000,000 and that 160,000,000 plus interest should be forfeited to the state. Now, we have a principle of law in America called the harm principle. If I punch you in the nose, you can sue me because I have a duty not to touch your nose, and I breached that duty, and I harmed you in your nose.

You can sue for pain and suffering and medical bills and loss of work and permanent injury if there is anybody. But if a friend of yours looks at the nose a week later and says, what happened to your nose? And you said, the judge did it to me, I’m going to sue the judge. No, that other person can’t sue me because I didn’t breach any duty to him.

I didn’t harm him. So that’s effectively what happened here. Except there was no nose breaking, there was no harm to the bank. The bank’s executives got on the witness stand during the case and said, he paid us back every nickel we loaned him. He’s one of the best clients we’ve had. He’s the president of the United States. But if he ever goes back into this business, we’ll be happy to lend him all the money he wants.

And still the state persuaded a judge that somehow the state was harmed. It was a phantom harm. Now you’re an economist, you’ll get a kick out of the state’s claim for harm. Here’s how we’re harmed. The state lawyer argued the banks loaned trump more money than they should have. They should have loaned him less money and therefore there would be more money in the bank for them to loan to other people, to small businesses.

A, the bank doesn’t lend from its reserves. It lends from the fake cash that the federal reserve gives to it. B, Deutsche bank doesn’t lend to small businesses. They don’t make loans less than $100 million. See, the state doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about because money is fungible. So if the bank over loaned to Trump, he didn’t put it into the money in a shoebox. He’s building skyscrapers, which is employing thousands of people, which is creating new wealth.

Each time one of those condos in those skyscrapers is bought and sold and bought and sold. And the judge, without a jury, bought. This nonsense allowed Trump’s assets to be seized from him. I’ll explain the seizure to you in a minute if you want to hear it. In one of the greatest acts of theft in the modern era,.

See more of Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom on their Public Channel and the MPN Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom channel.