This is how they derive the “they want to wipe us out!!!” lie. They translate successful treatment into wiping them out. Their condition is their idenniny so treating the condition equals genocide.

Making gender dysphoria go away=wiping out trans people, is the logic here.

But. The people in question still exist.

That makes it not genocide, not “they want to wipe us out.”

If people change political parties they don’t cease to exist. They change, but they don’t cease to exist. If believers turn atheist or atheists turn believers, same thing – they still exist, they’re just different.

A change in belief can of course be a very profound change, but no matter how profound it is it’s still not death.

It is possible for people to think of their former selves as dead in a way. Maybe we all do, in a way – but it’s a metaphorical way, a “feelings” way, a way in the head. It’s not literal death.

What if trans people were forced to accept treatment they don’t want, to get rid of their gender dysphoria? What if they’re blissfully happy pretending to be the other sex, and want to leave it at that? They should be left in peace, surely, provided they’re not harming other people. No men in women’s sports or prisons or rape crisis centers or awards, which would probably slash the number of blissfully happy trans women to near zero, but other than that, do watcha want. But either way, getting rid of the dysphoria is not getting rid of the person who had it.

Tavistock scandal is scandal:

More than 1,000 children were referred for puberty blockers at an experimental gender clinic where concerns were ignored to preserve a “gold dust” NHS contract, a new book claims.

Former clinicians at the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, have detailed how some “incredibly complex” children were placed on medication after one face-to-face assessment, despite many having a variety of mental health or family background problems.

And the “medication” isn’t really medication, it’s more like tampering.

The claims come in Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes, which will be released this month.

Barnes, a BBC Newsnight journalist, spoke to dozens of clinicians who worked at Gids, governors at the trust and children and their parents who used the service.

Barnes reports that “The clinic accounted for almost 30 per cent of the Tavistock NHS Trust’s income by 2021 and staff said it resembled a “tech start-up” with regular trips to international conferences.” And with money rolling in, which doesn’t always nudge people to think “Wait maybe we’re doing the wrong thing here.”

In 2016, Susie Green, former head of the pro-trans charity Mermaids, emailed Dr Polly Carmichael, who was then the head of Gids, asking to cut the time children had to spend on puberty blockers before irreversible cross-sex hormones could be introduced.

What kind of “charity” is it that tries to interfere with medical decisions at medical institutions?

Staff raised concerns when, on behalf of families, Green requested children’s clinicians to be changed to someone believed to be more likely to prescribe hormones.

How was that any of her business? Why wasn’t she told to fuck all the way off?

After initially treating just a handful of patients each year, referrals to Gids increased dramatically. In 2009-10 it received 97. By 2019-20 it received 2,748 — a rise of more than 2,700 per cent.

Participle confusion there. Gids initially treated just a handful of patients each year, but then referrals increased dramatically. At any rate – if this were an actual biological infection, a dramatic increase would indicate biological contagion. Since it’s not, what does the dramatic increase seem to indicate? Could it be popularity? Social contagion as opposed to medical contagion?

Dr Anna Hutchinson, a senior clinical psychologist at Gids, said the service was soon “accepting everyone”. She said puberty blockers were supposed to be prescribed to children to give them “time to think” about whether they wanted to transition fully, but she realised that almost all went on to take cross-sex hormones, such as testosterone and oestrogen, which have irreversible consequences.

Plus it turns out that blockers don’t just allow time to think – they too have irreversible consequences.

There were also concerns that parents were pushing children into transitioning, in cases of fabricated or induced illness (FII), previously known as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.

In one case, he said, the child told him, “my mum wants this for me”, or “my mum wants the blocker more than I do”. He said there was sexual abuse and domestic violence in the family and he and a colleague agreed that they would not be putting the young person forward for puberty blockers. However, this decision was allegedly overruled by Carmichael.

On other occasions a change in clinician would be requested by Green, the Mermaids chief, Spiliadis said. “I remember thinking and talking to Paul [Jenkins, the Tavistock chief] and saying that this is really inappropriate — how come a person who’s the director, or the CEO of a charity, is entitled to request a change of clinicians on behalf of a family?”

Just what I was wondering.

Read on.

This. Again.

A woman’s $1,100 went to a man.

Coel will enjoy this.

Trump called in the researchers, but they didn’t deliver the goods, so he blanked them.

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined werevoter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court.

…

“They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted,” said a person familiar with the work who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private research and meetings. “Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.”

And turned up nothing. There were a few anomalies but there are always a few anomalies.

Senior officials from Berkeley Research Group briefed Trump, then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and others on the findings in aDecember 2020conference call, people familiar with the matter said. Meadows showed skepticism of the findings and continued to maintain that Trump won. Trump also continued to say he won the election. The call grew contentious, people with knowledge of the meeting said.

Meadows was skeptical based on what? Besides what the boss wanted? It’s like being skeptical of the number of blades of grass in New Jersey. How would he know???

“Katy” Montgomerie says he had a bad experience.

What is a “hen do”? It’s what in the US is called a “bridal shower” – a party for a soon-to-marry woman attended only by women.

First of all, obviously nobody should throw drinks over people.

Second, if it really was a hen do then he didn’t belong there, and neither did the guy who threw the drink over him.

Third, I don’t believe it for a second about the crying. Montgomerie is a notorious bully; I can easily believe he was enraged, but not that he got the boo-hoos.

Fourth, it wasn’t his night, it was the future bride’s night. (Sorry, I find all this bridal/showery/do stuff kind of ooky, but it’s part of the story.) Fifth it wasn’t necessarily for no reason, on account of how Montgomerie is Montgomerie.

Whatever; he of course got lots of Twitter hugs and sympathy.

OJ is doing his “blame women” thing again.

To put it another way, it’s striking how men like OJ cheer from the sidelines as other men dress up in womanface and steal women’s rights.

Men who dress up in womanface are not “vulnerable” in relation to women. It’s the other way around. Men can still punch even when wearing lipstick.

Also, false equivalence is false.

Yes, Birth of a Nation and the KKK used white women as justification for racist violence. That’s true. It doesn’t follow that no one ever abuses women, or treats women as human shields. The KKK is one thing, and feminist women are another.

The rest of that interview:

20:59:

Robinson: Just one last specific: the other example, about women’s rights, is this yes tabloid story, but with substance behind it, that people who give birth shouldn’t be called mothers, they should be called people who give birth – is that really Stonewall’s view of the world?

Anderson: So, no, this again is what gets mischaracterized. What Stonewall looks to do is to provide organizations with good practice to provide an incluzive place to work. It’s not the law, Nick.

Robinson: But is it good practice to stop calling mothers “mothers”?

Anderson: In some organizations potentially that’s what they might want to do, in terms of the culture that they’re trying to create and in terms of what had actually worked in other organizations. These are suggestions…

Had actually worked how? In what sense? For whom? What are we talking about here? Why is it seen as a good thing to “create a culture” that conceals the existence of women?

This is about creating a place, creating a culture, where people really can be themselves.

Not if those people are women it doesn’t. It erases women so that men who pretend to be women can feel more comfy.

After that they move on to party politics so that’s where I cease to transcribe.

Chapter 2 – ideology. And somebody, on mainstream BBC Anderson says in a scolding voice, talked about “an LGBTQ ideology.” Yes that’s right, Sunshine, it’s an ideology that men can become women.

I mean, I’m not living an ideology, Nick. I’m living my life.

But he’s not T. It’s the T bit that rests on an ideology. Robinson:

But it’s a set of ideas, that we’re gonna come to, it’s an assertion of a belief not a fact that trans women are women – we’re gonna come to that –

They cross-talk for a few seconds with Anderson repeating “my life” and Robinson citing “a set of views and beliefs that some people see as an ideology.” Finally around 16 minutes they get around to women and their rights. Anderson says he can’t see why we’ve gone backwards and at 17:17 Robinson says

Well because a man with a penis was sent to a women’s prison, in an era in which you’re telling me that there are rights to safe spaces. [Anderson interjecting “Yeah…yeah…”] And Stonewall said it wouldn’t happen.

Anderson: And this individual is a rapist, and the full force of the law should apply to that individual –

Robinson: Is he a man, or a woman?

Anderson: Well, that person committed an offense whilst a man, has transitioned to being, um, a woman, and the Scottish Prison Service, as I believe would happen in England and Wales as well, has undertaken a risk assessment pretty quickly, and put said individual into a man’s prison.

Robinson: But it’s not an irrelevant question to ask is he a man or a woman?

Anderson: No it’s not an irrelevant question to ask, and this is a transitioning individual…

So there’s a liminal space between the two? If you’re “transitioning” it’s not quite right to say you are a woman? But then how do you ever know who is a woman?

Robinson: So he’s not a man or a woman.

Anderson: He is now identifying as a woman…

Robinson: But that’s describing what he thinks. I’m asking you what you think. Is he a man or is he a woman?

Anderson: What this person is is a rapist.

Robinson: No no, he’s a man or a woman. He may also be a rapist but is he a man or a woman?

Anderson: Well this person is now identified as a woman but fundamentally Nick they’re a rapist, and –

Robinson: No fundamentally, in a debate about whether we should change the law, so that people are what they say they are, with no other test and no other protection for women’s spaces, what matters is, are they what they say they are, so if Adam the rapist says I’m Isla the woman, is he a woman?

Anderson: But there is space, and current legislation does protect safe spaces, and that’s what –

Robinson [cutting him off and exasperatedly laughing a little]: But he was sent into a women’s prison! It’s only after the row that he was then removed from the women’s prison.

Anderson then, annoyingly, burbles condescendingly about prison stats – lots of people in prison, tiny number of trans prisoners, blah blah.

Robinson: But without getting bogged down, the reason many people think it matters, even if it was one in ten million, is because it’s about a principle. And the principle at the heart of this complicated row is a simple one. Stonewall appears to be asserting – are they? – that a trans woman is in all circumstances, whoever they are, whatever they’ve done, whatever their genitalia, is. a. woman. legally forever.

Anderson replies, absurdly, that people say “what is a biological woman??” and we know what a biological woman is…

…and Stonewall is not saying anything to change that. What it is saying is that we believe that a trans woman is a woman.

Which is exactly, but EXACTLY, why this is an ideology. Stonewall is “not saying anything” to change the fact that women are women but it believes that a man [who claims to be a woman] is a woman. THAT IS THE IDEOLOGY.

That one reply should become a meme, because it gives the whole fucking game away. Starts at 20:27. Make a note of it.

“What I’m not trying to do,” he goes on blithely, “is convince people of anything other than that.”

Other than what? That Stonewall believes The Magic Gender Ideology? We know. Or that trans women are women? That’s a whole other thing, bub, and you should stop trying to convince people of it.

Nick Robinson interviews Iain Anderson on Political Thinking, under the subtitle

How will the new chair of Stonewall approach the heated debate around gender politics?

We know the answer of course. With the complete indifference to the concerns of women that Stonewall has been demonstrating all along.

They start by talking about Stonewall, and Anderson cites “the LGBTQ+ community” – so right at the beginning we know we’re not going to get clarity, because there is no such community and there can’t be such a community, because they are at cross-purposes. The T is not the same as the LGB and they don’t belong together because the T is destructive of human rights, especially women’s rights, while the LGB is not.

Nick Robinson does at least mention the issue, which makes a nice change. At 3:47 he says “What’s fascinating about that is the suggestion that there is an LGBTQ+ community, there are people who dispute that, who were founders of Stonewall for example, and the suggestion that this is a repeat of what happened” – but then he says let’s come back to that, and changes direction. He points out that Anderson sat with Laura Kuensberg on the Beeb and said he wanted a conversation, he wanted a big tent, “and a day later you seemed to pack up your tent and say you didn’t want a conversation with anybody who disagreed with you, why did you change your mind?”

Not quite true, he says. “I’m interested in a conversation with anybody that wants to help support and lift up LGBTQ+ people.” So there we are again, as always, back at the same stupid dead end. If you “lift up” T people you drop LG people and women.

Anderson burbles about people “hitting Twitter” instead of sitting down to have a real conversation, and Robinson calls his bluff and asks “Would you meet with JK Rowling, would you meet with organizations like Women’s Place, would you meet with people who think they’re standing up for women’s rights, or are they not part of the quotes ‘real conversation’?” Robinson comes back with “people who want to lift up LGBTQ+ people” – so round and round we go forever, would you meet with feminist women, would meet with people who want to liftuplgbitq+people repeat infinity. If you look at the polling, Anderson says unctuously, most people, the vast majority of people, want to see LGBTQ+ people lifted up. FINE, but that’s NOT THE ISSUE.

That’s chapter one.

Originally a comment by As The Smoke Rises Upwards on Permits for brothels.

I claim no expertise on the subject, but my understanding is that legalizing prostitution increases trafficking of women. Once would-be johns no longer fear the legal consequences of paying for sex, demand for prostitutes soars. For some reason, however, not too many women are eager to sign up for a highly stigmatized job that will require them to have sex with an endless line of strange men who may or may not have STDs.¹ And so women are brought in from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to fill the gap between supply and demand.

I’ve also read that even legal prostitution—or perhaps especially legal prostitution—generates a sort of social blast zone wherever it is carried out. Women and girls who have the misfortune of living in the area are harassed and solicited for sex. This is why many localities that legalize prostitution at the same time attempt to restrict it to clearly delineated red light districts removed from residential areas and shopping districts. But if the men who are out buying sex behave like feral hogs towards even the “normal” and “good” women who happen to be walking on the street with them, then how exactly are they treating the “bad” and “dirty” women—the acceptable victims—when they’re alone together in a brothel room?

(1) Some brothels take steps to protect their “employees” (read: merchandise) from STDs, but based on what I’ve read, these measures are often very perfunctory—wouldn’t want to drive away customers, after all—and even more rigorous screening practices aren’t going to be failproof.

Amsterdam is trying to “manage” the rental of women.

In their latest effort to rein in carousing visitors, Amsterdam officials announced plans this week to tamp down disruptive behavior in the city’s Red Light District, including barring pot-smoking on the streets, reducing hours for restaurants and brothels, and tightening some alcohol restrictions.

What is a “red light district”? It’s a euphemism for an area where women are rented.

The city issues permits for brothels and sex clubs to operate. Under rules that had already been decided, brothels will only be able to stay open until 3 a.m., not the 6 a.m. closing time in place now.

So get your cash on the counter by 2:59 boys or you’ll have to wait until the next night.

Amsterdam has tried for years to address overtourism concerns, restricting some tours of the historic Red Light District before the pandemic and voting to move sex workers to an erotic center outside of the district in 2021.

An “erotic center” – that’s hilarious in a poisonous kind of way.

The Federalist (sorry) on the different tune that detransitioners hear:

After being swarmed by health providers who enabled her to medically transition as a minor, Prisha Mosley now says she’s been abandoned by the medical community as she attempts to navigate a complicated and painful detransition.

Transition is new, exciting, glam, “woke”; un-transitioning is un-all that.

Prisha has a slew of medical complications dating back to the more than five years she spent on testosterone and a double mastectomy that a plastic surgeon performed shortly after she turned 18. Many of those complications surround her endocrine system, which encompasses the hormones that regulate nearly every process in the body, from metabolism to growth and development, emotions, mood, sexual function, and sleep.

“I was hoping that if I could get my endocrine system working, I could be on less psychiatric medicine because low testosterone and estrogen will cause depression and anxiety, both of which I’m medicated for and don’t really like being medicated for,” she said.

Hmm. Makes you think, doesn’t it. Maybe it’s not such a clever idea to mess around with the endocrine system for something as intangible and mutable and in the head as “gender identity.”

Professional organizations that represent many of these providers claim to offer open, inclusive, supportive care for “transgender” and “gender diverse” individuals. That offering, it appears, doesn’t apply to individuals seeking to detransition.

It wouldn’t, though, would it. Inclusive and supportive are for trans people; those going in the other direction don’t need it and don’t deserve it. Right? They’re, like, traitors to The Cause. Affirmation is all, and what the other-directioners are doing is the opposite of affirmation.

It’s also a matter of medical knowledge.

Cat Cattinson, a woman who medically transitioned to a wrong-sex identity in her 20s before realizing it was a major mistake, said access to medical care from providers who are knowledgeable is one of the major barriers detransitioners face:

Because of the experimental nature of gender medicine, doctors know very little about the long-term effects of medical transition and even less about the health-care needs of those who detransition. Surgeries, obviously, are irreversible, but hormonal interventions can also have lasting effects requiring treatment to mitigate. Testosterone caused irreversible changes to my vocal cords, resulting in daily discomfort and pain, but most ENTs [ear, nose, and throat doctors] and other voice ‘professionals’ are not informed about how testosterone affects a female voice or how to help someone in my situation.

But she was given testosterone anyway. What the hell, right? Give it a shot and see what happens. Don’t worry about providing a path back.

Prisha doesn’t know why she’s been turned away from so many doctors and medical providers — whether it’s about money, politics, or a lack of knowledge to help. If it’s the latter, one might ask why medical professionals are allowed to put individuals, including minors, on drugs and “treatments” that they’re unable to later undo or address, should that patient change his or her mind.

One might indeed.

But they just might possibly conceivably game the system.

Transgender applicants are being offered “ethically dubious” preferential access to a university, raising fears that fraudsters could game the system to get ahead of straight-A pupils.

Dundee University includes transgender status in its widening access policy, which lowers the admissions criteria for applicants who are deemed to be disadvantaged.

In the US it’s called affirmative action (and it’s highly contested and has been since it came into being decades ago).

Preferential access, widening access, affirmative action, whatever; why would trans people need it? What trans-specific barriers to higher education do they face?

Vikki Boliver, a sociology professor who sits on the Scottish government’s access delivery group, warned that fraudsters could “game the system” by pretending to be transgender.

Her team at Durham University found no link between gender identity and poor educational attainment.

Even if no fraudsters game the system, even if all trans applicants are sincere in their belief that they’re trans, on what basis do they need preferential access?

Male reporter talks to three women about their work, fails to avoid sneering.

Lisa Mackenzie, Kath Murray and Lucy Hunter Blackburn call themselves “a policy analysis collective”. They wince slightly when they hear this description spoken out loud.

“It was the best descriptor of ourselves we could come up with,” Mackenzie says apologetically. Known collectively as Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM), they have consistently provided the most cogent criticism of the Scottish government’s attempts to make it easier to change your legal gender.

In policy papers, blog posts and evidence to parliament over the past five years they have offered clarity where there was muddle. With intellectual ruthlessness they have identified key weaknesses in Sturgeon’s proposal. They have provided a line by line feminist critique of a policy which, despite a healthy majority in parliament, remains deeply unpopular with the public and deeply divisive within the SNP. Gender reform has convulsed Scottish politics and shone a harsh light on how we are governed — and the MBM trio have been operating the searchlight.

So far so good, and it continues to be good for several more paragraphs, but then…

Despite critics pointing out the risks, Scottish government ministers pushed the gender recognition law through Holyrood in December. The UK government blocked it last month, claiming a conflict with UK-wide equality legislation. A showdown at the Supreme Court now looks likely. Meanwhile, the first minister has come under fire over the case of a double rapist known as Isla Bryson who was sent to a women’s jail after claiming to be transitioning to a woman.

Public debate on this subject is shrill and moves quickly to extremes, with little scope for agreement. MBM deny they are participants in a culture war. Murray says their “emphasis on evidence and analysis is the counter to that kind of accusation”.

Sigh. He just had to go for the s-word.

I have warned the trio I will ask them deliberately provocative questions to see how they respond. In the history of equality, I say, progress came when people made room for others who had been excluded. Sometimes they made room voluntarily and sometimes because the law required it. So white people made room on the Alabama bus. Married heterosexuals made room in the register office for married homosexuals. On trans rights, were MBM saying there was no room on the bus?

It should be possible to ask provocative questions without asking stupid questions. We don’t have to “make room” for everybody on every bus. Women don’t have to “make room” for abusive men, or rapists, or murderers of women, or murderers of any kind. We can’t be “inclusive” of everyone and everything in all places and situations, and trying to do so would be “exclusive” of far more people than it would include. It’s not unjust “exclusion” for women not to want men peering at them over the wall of the toilet compartment. Men own most of the buses in the first place, and if women want to say there’s no room on this particular bus because all the seats are taken then we get to say that.

Blackburn bristles. “The privilege argument is very difficult to hear when you’re a woman,” she says before adding, “particularly from a man. I never feel privileged in contexts where I feel vulnerable to men. It’s offensive. It’s offensively wrong.”

Oh no no, it’s merely “provocative.”

Breathtaking.

Uterus transplants for transgender women will soon be possible, doctors say.

So what? It’s possible to cut people’s heads off, but it’s not desirable. Sticking a uterus in a man is not desirable. Human beings have more urgent things to do at this time.

Several teams are “actively working” to make uterus transplants for transgender women a reality, according to an article published in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, with the first such procedure likely to happen “within the next few years, if not sooner.”

Why stop there? Why not transplant zebra legs onto humans? Why not transplant dog tails onto sharks? Why not remake The Fly?

If the anatomical challenges in transgender women can be overcome — and surgeons have said none seem insurmountable — uterus transplants would make it possible for trans women to gestate and give birth to a child.

Never mind global warming, never mind pandemics, never mind droughts and famines and wildfires, never mind poverty and exploitation and rape and genocide, let’s use our intelligence and resources making it possible for men to gestate frankenbabies.

Makes no sense.

Literally zero sense.

His new blue tick is simply a thing you buy. You pay $8 a month, it’s yours. It means nothing.

The old blue tick was a verification of identity and (at least sometimes) “notability.” It was free, and it required documentation.

How is the second “truly corrupt” and the first not corrupt?

Maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe to him “corrupt” just means “not giving Elon Musk money.”

Here’s a thing that makes me angry.

In this video for example. You can hear people bellowing “Allahu akbar” as the boy is pulled out – that’s all you can hear them bellowing.

Allah is great because he (definitely he) allowed them to rescue one child? Why not just not do the earthquake???

It’s so Stockholm syndrome. This guy who has killed my whole family and most of the people in my city and 20 thousand and counting total – he’s great because he cut me a tiny break.

It’s not just Allah, either. I notice myself blurting “thankgod” in moments of intense relief. I’ve never been able to think of any good substitute, either – “thank fuck” is all very well but it’s kind of imprecise.

Anyway, I wish humans could get out of the habit. Gods aren’t our friends. If they were they would have clued us in about global warming at least 150 years ago.

Speaking of Trump and criminality and how he totally had no idea it’s not legal to steal an election, Mark Pomerantz was on Fresh Air a couple of days ago.

Our guest today, Mark Pomerantz, has written an insider’s account of the year he and others at the Manhattan district attorney’s office spent on a criminal investigation of Donald Trump’s finances and business practices. Pomerantz was a retired prosecutor and lawyer in December 2020 when he was invited to join then DA Cyrus Vance’s team looking into Trump. In his book, Pomerantz calls the investigation the legal equivalent of a plane crash where the principal cause was pilot error.

At the end of 2021, as District Attorney Vance approached retirement, Pomerantz felt the team had sufficient evidence to file felony charges against Trump. But the newly elected district attorney, Alvin Bragg, wasn’t ready to proceed with charges. So Pomerantz and another senior attorney resigned. Their departures made news. And Pomerantz wrote in his resignation letter that not bringing a case against Trump was a grave failure of justice.

To put it mildly.

The thing about Pomerantz is that he spent a lot of time – many many hours – looking at the [deeply boring] details of the financial fiddling, work that normally an underling would do.

DAVIES: You know, you would say at the end of the book that when others were reluctant to proceed with charges against Trump, they hadn’t gone through this process. They didn’t see, you know, what was really at work here. It took time to get into it and grasp the import of it. Let’s take an example or two of these statements and what they told us about Trump’s practices. Do you want to pick one?

POMERANTZ: Yeah. One pretty straightforward example has to do with the triplex penthouse apartment that Trump had on the top of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In the years 2015 and 2016, the value he assigned to that apartment for financial statement purposes was $327 million. And he reached that, among other things, by saying, well, this apartment contains 30,000 square feet. And let’s put aside for the moment the price per square foot that was used, although that was inflated as well. But the notion that the apartment should be valued on the basis that it contains 30,000 square feet fell apart when it became clear the apartment doesn’t have 30,000 square feet, it has 11,000 square feet.

That’s smaller. 11 is smaller than 30.

So for financial statement purposes, the value of the apartment was tripled by simply saying it had 30,000 square feet when it didn’t. The value of the apartment was vastly overstated. Now, did Trump know that the apartment had only 11,000 square feet and not 30,000 square feet? Was he responsible for telling people that the apartment had 30,000 square feet? Well, we spoke to witnesses who heard him say, in fact, right at this time, that the apartment has 33,000 square feet, even more than the square footage that was used in the financial statements. And if the question is, does Donald Trump know the difference between a 30,000 square foot apartment and an 11,000 square foot apartment, consider the facts that it was his business to buy and sell apartments. He built the building that contained this apartment. He looked after the renovation of this apartment. He has proclaimed himself a real estate guru, and he lived in the apartment. So the notion that it was an innocent mistaken overstatement is just not one that I think people should accept.

It’s ludicrous. Real estate hustlers live and breathe square footage. Of course they don’t make “mistakes” of that kind.

And $327 million is a lotttttttttttttttttttt of money.

POMERANTZ: Well, $327 million is not only a value that exceeds the price that has been ever paid for any apartment in New York City to this date, it’s a number that is larger than the price that has ever been paid for a private residence in the history of the United States, ever. In fact, $327 million for a single residence would put it on the list of the highest prices ever paid or ever valued for a private residence, including such properties as the Taj Mahal and Buckingham Palace. So, you know, it’s a nice apartment, but $327 million? I don’t think so. Our experts looked at the apartment and valued it in the neighborhood of $55- to $60 million, being charitable with respect to its possible value.

I just looked up Balmoral for further comparison. The estimate is $140 million – and it’s enormous, probably genuinely 300 30,000 square feet or something, plus all that land, plus the cachet of royal royality. Trump’s vulgar gilt apartment with the nice view of the park not quite the same.

Any more inflated stats of that kind?

POMERANTZ: Well, another easy example is his golf course in Jupiter, which he bought at the end of 2013, I believe, for $5 million. It was valued as of June 30, 2014 – so that’s about seven months later – it was valued in connection with his financial statements at over $60 million. He had bought the golf course only a few months earlier and had paid $5 million in cash. So how do you get from $5 million to $62 million when no substantial changes or building or redesign or anything much had happened to the golf course in the several months between when he bought it and when it was valued on his financial statements? When we looked at the accounting backup in detail, we saw that Trump had – when he bought the property, he had also inherited some liabilities to members. There were circumstances in which he would potentially have to pay back their membership deposits, and there was about $41 million worth of potential refund obligations. And so he added that to the $5 million.

But the problem was, he had also said in the financial statements that for liability purposes, those liabilities were unlikely to be repaid. There’d always be new members, so they would be valued at zero. Well, he valued them at zero on the liability side, but he valued them at $41 million on the asset side. You can’t do that. And on top of that, he added another 30% for the so-called brand value of the fact that his name was now on the golf course. Again, whether or not that’s appropriate in some circumstances is beside the point because the financial statement said we’re not including brand value in the values that are reflected on this statement. So again, that value was misleading.

Zero on the liability side, $41 million on the asset side. It’s so Trump.

Why did he do all this wild inflation of his monetary worth? To get banks to lend him vast sums of money. That’s a crime.

POMERANTZ: What we learned – and when I say we, I should include the staff of the New York attorney general, which had been conducting a parallel civil investigation and which discovered many of the same facts and indeed discovered many of these facts before the DA’s office learned them. And they were extremely helpful in allowing our criminal investigation to go forward. But what emerged from the investigation was that the financial statements were used in a variety of contexts. But the one context in which they were used that most directly led to criminal liability was the fact that the statements were given to banks in connection with applications for loans, in connection with a loan that The Trump Organization got to purchase the Doral Golf Resort near Miami, in connection with the creation of a luxury hotel at the old post office property in Washington, D.C., and a refinancing of Trump’s property in Chicago.

In each case, The Trump Organization asked for financing in the amount of millions – hundreds of millions of dollars. And in each case, the bank required that Donald Trump personally guarantee the loans. And Trump was willing to guarantee the loans, but the bank insisted in connection with those guarantees. And this is standard practice in the industry and certainly for this portion of the bank’s operations. The bank insisted on not only a guarantee but the submission of a personal financial statement. The bank required as a condition of making the loan and accepting the guarantee that Donald Trump verify that the financial statements he supplied to the bank were true and accurate in all material respects and that they accurately reflected his financial condition. And they didn’t. They overstated his net worth. They overstated the value of his assets by literally billions of dollars. For each year that he submitted personal financial statements to the bank – and the bank required them to be updated annually – the financial statements were massively inflated. And that’s a crime.

He would have just blamed it on his accountants, right? The prosecutors knew that, right?

POMERANTZ: We did. And if a charge had been brought or if a charge should be brought, and certainly in the context of the pending civil case, Donald Trump will certainly say, I relied on accountants; I relied on the people around me. And to be sure, we looked for and got evidence reflecting his personal involvement and responsibility for the financial statements. We developed evidence that he had been involved in providing the values for particular assets to the people in the Trump Organization whose job it was to compile these numbers.

They were, of course, assets that he spent his lifetime building and acquiring. He cared deeply about his net worth. And we had evidence that he had a history of exaggerating and indeed lying and misleading people about his net worth and the value of his assets. And bear in mind, each financial statement indicated that he, Donald Trump, was responsible for the preparation of the financial statements, responsible for the numbers that they contained. They’re his assets. The financial statements were used for his benefit. They were prepared by people who worked for him and who followed his directions. And so we thought the circumstances made out a pretty compelling case that he was indeed personally responsible for the misstatements.

One would hope that’s the way it works – that the big bosses don’t get to say “Oh it was all the underlings’ fault” and walk away humming a cheerful tune.

And on top of all the paper and the circumstances and the facts surrounding the valuation of particular properties, Michael Cohen also told us, as he had told Congress some years earlier, that he had been in the room with Donald Trump and with the CFO, Allen Weisselberg, when the financial statements were prepared. And he knew that the process included Trump saying, in effect, this is what I need to be worth. Now go out, and come back with values of the properties that add up to what I need to be worth. And so the valuations that were put on individual properties were, in effect, reverse engineered to meet the target that Trump had set forth for his net worth. And so that had all the trappings of criminal conduct.

Yet Trump remains at liberty.