Donald Trumps History of Lying Under Oath

[octoberlib]

BY KURT EICHENWALD ON 8/12/16 AT 10:46 AM


He blusters and fumes and attacks when people challenge his nonsense, and he doesn’t even try to sound credible. He has spent too much time in business blustering, bullying and lying, and he isn’t about to stop now.That’s why anyone considering voting for Trump should read some of the depositions he has given over the years. Remember, this was testimony under oath. Either he consistently lies when under oath or his inability to recognize the truth is a symptom of a psychiatric disorder. I described in my previous letter to you how Trump lied in testimony before Congress. He explicitly stated he had held no discussions with anyone associated with Indian casinos about doing business with them...and then a congressman produced an affidavit, telephone records and letters proving that was a lie.


Trump often doesn’t even try to make sense when explaining away a lie. In 2011, he was deposed about a failed Florida condo project. The building’s developer had paid a licensing fee to slap the Trump name on it, but—other than allowing his name to be used in marketing to deceive potential buyers—Trump had nothing to do with the project, which closed after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in nonrefundable deposits. During Trump’s testimony under oath, the plaintiff’s lawyer confronted him with marketing material in which he had boasted that the building would be a “signature development by Donald J. Trump.”

Despite the indisputable meaning of those words, Trump disputed them: When the advertising says the building is a development by Donald Trump, “in some cases they’re developed by me and in some cases they’re not.” He never explained how “developed by Trump” can mean “not developed by Trump” but pointed out that the lengthy legal documents signed by those unfortunate buyers disclosed in the fine print that he was not the builder. Why, then, the plaintiff’s lawyer asked, didn’t he include that disclosure in the advertising rather than the misleading “signature development” clause? “You can’t put it in the advertising because there’s not enough room,” Trump replied.Clearly perplexed, the plaintiff’s lawyer tried to get Trump to explain how the same words could mean different things. “It’s your testimony that the statement ‘this signature development by Donald J. Trump’ is consistent with the position that Donald J. Trump is not a developer of this project?”“Absolutely,” Trump testified.

The all-time classic Trump deposition is the one he gave in 2007 in a libel lawsuit he brought against Timothy O’Brien, author of TrumpNation, because the book stated that Trump’s net worth was far less than he claimed. (It was. Just ask Deutsche Bank.) Throughout this deposition, Trump sounded delusional, in what some might dismiss as compulsive lying. But knowing Trump, I don’t think he was lying; he believed what he was saying, but the facts just kept getting in his way.Trump needed to prove he was damaged by the purported libel, but he wasn’t content with just saying he had lost some specific bit of business. Instead, he claimed to have lost business he never knew existed. “The fact is that a lot of people who would have done deals with me didn’t come to do deals with me,” he testified. “I can’t tell you who they are because they never came to me.”


http://www.newsweek.com/mr-speaker-stop-trump-let-gop-lose-election-489797