Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: It's four weeks until the start of the trial in
Speaker 1: the New York Attorney General's two hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollar lawsuit against Donald Trump and two of his sons
Speaker 1: for an alleged scheme to manipulate the value of a
Speaker 1: range of assets, from his skyscrapers to his golf resorts.
Speaker 1: Trump denies the charges and has criticized New York Attorney
Speaker 1: General Letitia James many times, saying it's a political prosecution
Speaker 1: that she campaigned on.
Speaker 2: But she proclaimed I look forward to going into the
Speaker 2: office of Attorney General every single day, suing him and
Speaker 2: then going home being very happy. I said, oh gee,
Speaker 2: I hope she gets in. I hope she will. But
Speaker 2: she announced what is fueling my soul right now is
Speaker 2: Trump getting Trump And she knows nothing about me.
Speaker 1: But the Ag says the evidence against Trump is so
Speaker 1: extensive that the judge should find Trump libel on the
Speaker 1: fraud claims before the trial. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal
Speaker 1: reporter Patricia Hurtado. Leticia James says the evidence is so
Speaker 1: extensive that the judge should find Trump libel for fraud
Speaker 1: without a trial. What kind of evidence is she talking about.
Speaker 3: Well, they have Trump's own words, and they're confronting him
Speaker 3: with statements he's made about how he values his property.
Speaker 3: And it's quite extraordinary because basically it's almost as if
Speaker 3: Trump is saying he believes his brand is limitless and
Speaker 3: that his brand, the Trump brand, and his properties are
Speaker 3: worth more money since he was elected president, and he
Speaker 3: calls them the mona Lisas of properties. He says, for example,
Speaker 3: that you can have an old Master painting on your
Speaker 3: wall and it is worth a lot of money even
Speaker 3: though it doesn't do anything. So carrying his properties to
Speaker 3: old Master paintings, she says he.
Speaker 1: Had a net worth of no more than two point
Speaker 1: six billion dollars rather than his stated net worth of
Speaker 1: up to six point one billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Well, he's accused of inflating his assets by at least
Speaker 3: eight hundred and twelve million to two point two billion,
Speaker 3: is what she alleges. The transcript is basically the first
Speaker 3: time we have a glimpse into Trump's mindset of how
Speaker 3: he came to value his companies. He also shockingly says
Speaker 3: he has no role in the valuation that he says
Speaker 3: it was up to his son, Eric Trump to handle
Speaker 3: the main day to day operations of the companies and
Speaker 3: to do these assessments of value. So he basically takes
Speaker 3: all this out of his hands and says that it's
Speaker 3: up to his kids.
Speaker 1: Are we talking about just properties in New York?
Speaker 3: No, We're talking about properties all over the place. He's
Speaker 3: talking about Mara a Lago, he talks about his golf
Speaker 3: courses all over the country. But basically the argument is
Speaker 3: that he's misstated or inflated the assets the Trump Organization,
Speaker 3: and which is an umbrella organization or corporation under which
Speaker 3: all these other entities come. That Trump has overvalued their
Speaker 3: worth based on what he thinks it's worth.
Speaker 1: So one thing I sort of found odd is and
Speaker 1: he said this in an interview with Sean Hannity, that
Speaker 1: the Trump Organization had a very powerful disclaimer on all
Speaker 1: of its loan applications, telling banks not to rely on
Speaker 1: the company's appraisals.
Speaker 3: That's the argument he's going to make. You know, hey, buyer,
Speaker 3: beware the caveat answer right, that it's the problem of
Speaker 3: anyone who read these material that they should have never
Speaker 3: been hoodwinked. Some may argue that, and I'm sure Leticia
Speaker 3: James is going to argue at the trial, Hey, you
Speaker 3: put this stuff in. You can't say, oh, I'm excused
Speaker 3: because I have a footnote that says it's really not.
Speaker 3: It's up to you to believe me or not. That's
Speaker 3: the kind of thing that a jury in New York
Speaker 3: State will have to determine whether or not this is fraudulent.
Speaker 1: Attorneys always make some rejudgment motions. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: shot in the dark. Really, I mean, what are the
Speaker 1: chances that a judge would grant a some rejudgment motion
Speaker 1: in a case like this, with the result being that
Speaker 1: it could ban Trump from serving as a director of
Speaker 1: any New York based company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the judge has been very critical of
Speaker 3: motions and efforts by Trump and his lawyers. In fact,
Speaker 3: today there's some discussions about repleting and making new arguments
Speaker 3: that they've already lost. But I mean, now you know,
Speaker 3: the rubber has hit the road. We're finally seeing what
Speaker 3: Trump said as well as what his kids say. There's
Speaker 3: different depositions. There was one from Ellen Weiselberg that makes
Speaker 3: references to his time in prison. You know, his travails
Speaker 3: with getting convicted as the CFO of the Trump organization
Speaker 3: and fleeting guilty. So I mean, now it's sort of
Speaker 3: all the cards that Letitia James has are on the table,
Speaker 3: all the evidence that she's collected. It's massive. It's hundreds
Speaker 3: of pages of statements, and I guess it just depends
Speaker 3: whether or not a New York State Supreme Court jury
Speaker 3: how they'll find they believe these arguments. He at one
Speaker 3: point said, you know a property. There's a property called
Speaker 3: Seven Springs in Westchester, and even though it's swampy and
Speaker 3: there's nothing developed, he said, it's worth a ton of
Speaker 3: money in his view because it could get developed. So
Speaker 3: in his mind, that aspirational amount of money is worth
Speaker 3: it because he has the Trump brand. He's even better
Speaker 3: now because he was former President Trump, and now aspirationally
Speaker 3: it's worth a ton of money because it could be
Speaker 3: developed even though it hasn't been developed.
Speaker 1: Why are these depositions being revealed now, Well.
Speaker 3: Because the New York Attorney General has basically put down
Speaker 3: own showing all the documents now of all the questioning
Speaker 3: of all the parties, and it seems to be quite
Speaker 3: compelling case that she's making that these valuations were speculative
Speaker 3: or based on slimsy premises, so to call his properties,
Speaker 3: you know, it could be worth two million, forty million,
Speaker 3: thirty million, six hundred million, you know. Basically he kind
Speaker 3: of even in his own testimony when talking about you know,
Speaker 3: what's the intrinsic value of mar Lago or Turnberry golf
Speaker 3: course in Scotland. Quote, you know, these things have tremendous
Speaker 3: value to rich people that you know, if it makes
Speaker 3: two millions three million, and therefore would be worth thirty
Speaker 3: or forty million, I think you could sell it for
Speaker 3: four or five or six hundred million, because it's the painting,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, that's kind of that's the kind
Speaker 3: of rationale that may give a jury pause and have
Speaker 3: them scratching their heads. So, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: where this is an effort to possibly push discussions forward
Speaker 3: to sdeed liability. I assume that Trump will not let them,
Speaker 3: you know, agree to accept liability. But this is certainly
Speaker 3: quite something that Letitia James is showing her cards. They're
Speaker 3: all on the table, and it kind of is gobsmackingly
Speaker 3: shocking in some way.
Speaker 1: At his first deposition in August of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than four hundred times
Speaker 1: and refuse to answer questions. Then at the second one
Speaker 1: in April of twenty twenty three, he answered questions at length.
Speaker 1: The Deputy ag said to his lawyer at one point,
Speaker 1: we're going to be here until midnight if your client
Speaker 1: answers every question with an eight minute speech, right right.
Speaker 3: I look at transcripts all the time on cases, but
Speaker 3: the long answering answers are quite something. So I guess
Speaker 3: the floodgates were open at this point, and he felt
Speaker 3: he could justify his explanation for all these valuations on
Speaker 3: the property. So it's kind of like, I guess, once
Speaker 3: he opened the door, I couldn't stop talking about how
Speaker 3: he came up with all these, you know, the values
Speaker 3: on these properties, and he's very proud of them. You know,
Speaker 3: he's proud of developing things like forty Wall Street. He
Speaker 3: said it was basically a dumpy building until his family
Speaker 3: took it over. And you know, also the reason it
Speaker 3: may not be worth anything more is because the city
Speaker 3: needs to get its act together. So if the city
Speaker 3: ever comes back and you convert the entire tower of
Speaker 3: forty Wall into condos, and may you could make an
Speaker 3: absolute fortune far greater than the five or six hundred million.
Speaker 3: Probably the building is worth now.
Speaker 1: So I guess I see why the Attorney General thinks
Speaker 1: that she can have the judge ruled just on the
Speaker 1: paper is because there's his deposition, there is the financial papers.
Speaker 1: Also in his testimony. You read it all, Patty, So
Speaker 1: tell me where did it come out that he considered
Speaker 1: the presidency the most important job in the world, saving
Speaker 1: millions of lives. I think you would have nuclear holocaust
Speaker 1: if I didn't deal with North Korea. I think you
Speaker 1: would have a nuclear war if I weren't elected. Where
Speaker 1: did that fit into his deposition?
Speaker 3: Well, he was basically boasting that this is what he's
Speaker 3: been busy doing. He says, I was virtually not involved
Speaker 3: in this business with the real estate.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: I really wasn't interested, believe it or not. I was
Speaker 3: interested in saving the problem with North Korea, which was
Speaker 3: ready to blow up, and solving the problems we had
Speaker 3: in China, who was just ripping us off left and right,
Speaker 3: and making sure that Russia never went into the Ukraine,
Speaker 3: which they didn't under our auspices. So you can see
Speaker 3: that he's basically saying I wasn't really involved in the
Speaker 3: Trump Org and all the business operations. That wasn't my job.
Speaker 3: I was saving the WARLD.
Speaker 1: And Michael Cohen, his former lawyer who has testified against him,
Speaker 1: says he's throwing his kids under the bus because they
Speaker 1: were the ones in charge, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was kind of surprided by that because when
Speaker 3: he was asked point blank, well were you involved in
Speaker 3: what were you doing? He said no, as Eric Trump
Speaker 3: was doing it, I wasn't. So it is kind of surprising,
Speaker 3: but you know, I guess in his mind that's what
Speaker 3: he wanted to say, that Eric Trump was doing the business. Quote,
Speaker 3: my son Eric is much more involved with it than
Speaker 3: I am. I've been doing other things, and I guess
Speaker 3: you could say on something major final decisions, whatever, but
Speaker 3: I've been much less involved in it over the last
Speaker 3: five years, five or six years ever before that.
Speaker 1: So Patty remind us what's at stake here if he
Speaker 1: loses this case completely.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean basically, Letitia James seeks to sanction him
Speaker 3: and also remove him from ever running any of his companies,
Speaker 3: which would be quite a blow.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The sons have also been sued Eric and Don Junior
Speaker 3: Ivanka was removed as a descendant. So you know, I
Speaker 3: guess it will hobble the family from running its own
Speaker 3: businesses and possibly close them down.
Speaker 1: And Pat, before I let you go, you covered. And
Speaker 1: we've talked about a case where a former twenty first
Speaker 1: Century Fox executive and an Urguayan sports marketing group, full Play,
Speaker 1: were convicted of engaging in a wire fraud and money
Speaker 1: laundering scheme to get inside information to secure US broadcasting
Speaker 1: rights to the twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two World
Speaker 1: Cup tournaments. Why did the federal judge in that case
Speaker 1: overturn those convictions.
Speaker 3: We had a decisions, a pair of decisions having to
Speaker 3: do with seft of honest services wire fraud, and it
Speaker 3: has to do with a component of bribery, you know,
Speaker 3: federal bribery wire fraud. And basically, this former twenty first
Speaker 3: century Fox executive, Ernan Lopez, and this company then Uruguay
Speaker 3: and sports marketing company called full Play, went on trial
Speaker 3: and it went on for weeks in federal court and
Speaker 3: they were convicted by a jury of multiple counts of
Speaker 3: wire fraud. And that was in March when they were convicted,
Speaker 3: and then we had two decisions to come out in
Speaker 3: May from the Supreme Court stemming from federal corruption cases
Speaker 3: that Manhattan US Attorney Bararra brought against elected officials for
Speaker 3: public corruption, for bribe pain and bribe receiving anyway. The
Speaker 3: Court rules in those two decisions involving per Cocoa and
Speaker 3: Seminelli basically narrowing or limiting the prosecutor's ability to use
Speaker 3: the statute when it came to bribery, and it gets
Speaker 3: very complicated that basically it hampers the government from bringing
Speaker 3: these certain kind of wire fraud cases under certain theories.
Speaker 3: So in this case, the judge who had had this
Speaker 3: trial it was hotly contested, repet rejected any requests to
Speaker 3: overturn the conviction or dismiss the charges. Here we have
Speaker 3: two months later the Supreme Court ruling comes in about
Speaker 3: you can't use the statute anymore, and she actually said
Speaker 3: there was no international bribery component that could be met
Speaker 3: now under the new standard that the Supreme Court has assigned.
Speaker 3: So you know, she said, she noted that she had
Speaker 3: previously rejected the defendant's arguments for acquittal, and now she
Speaker 3: had to do it in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they always have trouble with these public corruption cases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're always going up to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean we wrote a feature story about this
Speaker 3: for the Business Week, and I talked to one of
Speaker 3: these good government guys and he said, the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: and have basically said it's up to the states to
Speaker 3: prosecute these cases. But his point was New York State,
Speaker 3: which is where this corruption allegedly happened, where people were
Speaker 3: doing did Regaine and alleged bright pain Now, I mean
Speaker 3: they were convicted of it. That public officials. Now, it
Speaker 3: would be up to state prosecutors to bring these kinds
Speaker 3: of cases. But he said that unfortunately, he said, state
Speaker 3: law is like Swiss cheese. It's not very good. It's
Speaker 3: so porous. It doesn't have as much heft that the
Speaker 3: US did. And if we remember all the way back
Speaker 3: pre Ferrara's crackdown, which is what these cases stemmed from,
Speaker 3: was supposedly, you know, rife corruption with elected officials were
Speaker 3: taking bribes and paying developers are getting paid kickbacks. So
Speaker 3: who is going to enforce this now It's been left
Speaker 3: up to the states to do it.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Pat, That's Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado.
Speaker 4: This is a dark day in Jacksonville's history. Any loss
Speaker 4: of life is tragic, but the hate that motivated the
Speaker 4: shooter's killing spree adds an additional layer of hardbreak.
Speaker 1: A masked white man shot and killed three black people
Speaker 1: inside a Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General store on Saturday. He
Speaker 1: used a gun painted with a swastika and then turned
Speaker 1: the gun on himself. After reviewing the man's writings, Sheriff T. K.
Speaker 1: Waters said the attack was definitely racially motivated.
Speaker 4: It was clear that his crimes were motivated by wanting
Speaker 4: to want of to shoe black people, which is quite
Speaker 4: unfortunate because it's not a representative of our community at all.
Speaker 1: The shooting took place within hours of the conclusion of
Speaker 1: a commemorative march on Washington in the nation's capital, where
Speaker 1: organizers drew attention to the growing threat of hate motivated
Speaker 1: violence against people of color. The attack on a shopping
Speaker 1: center in a predominantly black neighborhood will undoubtedly evoke fears
Speaker 1: of past shootings targeting Black Americans, like the one at
Speaker 1: a Buffalo, New York supermarket in twenty twenty two and
Speaker 1: the one at a History or African Methodist Episcopal Church
Speaker 1: in Charleston, South Carolina in twenty fifteen, his President Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: White supremacy is a poison. It's a poison. It's been
Speaker 5: allowed to grow faster and faster in our communities to
Speaker 5: the point where the intelligence communities determined. The US intelligence
Speaker 5: community is determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy
Speaker 5: is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the home line.
Speaker 1: And a new study provided to USA Today shows that
Speaker 1: in the country's largest ten cities, the number of reported
Speaker 1: hate crimes rose twenty two percent from twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty two, making last year the second consecutive
Speaker 1: year hate crimes reached a record high. The Justice Department
Speaker 1: is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an
Speaker 1: act of racially motivated violent extremism. Joining me is Professor
Speaker 1: Gabriel Chin of the UC Davis School of Law. The
Speaker 1: NAACP issued a travel advisory this spring warning black people
Speaker 1: to use extreme care if traveling to Florida, and argued
Speaker 1: that the state's loose gun laws and Republican Governor Ron DeSantis'
Speaker 1: anti woke campaign to deny the existence of systemic racism
Speaker 1: created a culture of open hostility toward African Americans and
Speaker 1: people of color.
Speaker 6: What's your reaction, Well, I'm afraid that what Governor DeSantis
Speaker 6: and his allies are doing might contribute to an atmosphere
Speaker 6: of hostility, resentment, potential violence. It's not as though Governor
Speaker 6: Desanta's unlike maybe President Trump has not specifically advocated resistance
Speaker 6: and protests and taking action in those ways. But you know,
Speaker 6: the effort to cut down discussion of critical race theory,
Speaker 6: the attack on the African American studies ap these standards,
Speaker 6: it seems to me to be an effort to essentially
Speaker 6: rewrite history and then cut off all discussion about that history.
Speaker 6: It seems like the governor of Florida, which was a
Speaker 6: slave state and was a significant Jim Crow state and
Speaker 6: a highly segregated state, and in many ways a deeply,
Speaker 6: deeply discriminatory state, they want to pretend that that history
Speaker 6: doesn't exist, or maybe not that it doesn't exist, but
Speaker 6: that it has nothing to do with our lives today.
Speaker 6: And if that's your view, if your view is, you know,
Speaker 6: some bad things happened many, many years ago, and there's
Speaker 6: been fair and equal treatment in the lives of everybody
Speaker 6: who's around today and their parents and their grandparents, and
Speaker 6: discrimination is really, you know, it's the equivalent of something
Speaker 6: that happened to the ancient Egyptians. If that's your view,
Speaker 6: then when African Americans are Asian Americans or Arab Americans
Speaker 6: or anybody else objects to discriminatory treatment or raises questions
Speaker 6: about discriminatory treatment, it seems like grasping. It seems like,
Speaker 6: you know, if it really were ancient history, it would
Speaker 6: seem like, you know, an illegitimate effort to take things
Speaker 6: that don't belong to them, to be a race hustler
Speaker 6: and get ahead based on false arguments and therefore take
Speaker 6: advantage of good people who did nothing wrong. And I'm
Speaker 6: afraid that's the dynamic that may be going on in
Speaker 6: the minds of some extremists in Florida. And the problem
Speaker 6: is that there are some extremists in Florida, just like
Speaker 6: in every other place, there are people who are not
Speaker 6: well versed in history, who are not very good at reasoning.
Speaker 6: Maybe people like this individual who did the shooting in Jacksonville,
Speaker 6: who have ment health problems. I'm not an expert on
Speaker 6: his situation, but apparently he had some mental health problems
Speaker 6: at various points in his life, and somebody like that
Speaker 6: might be susceptible to really picking up conspiracy theories and
Speaker 6: taking action based on it. I mean, it's just so
Speaker 6: outlandish and so crazy that somebody would say it's worth
Speaker 6: it to me to kill some people, even though I'm
Speaker 6: going to die myself, you know, because they are doing
Speaker 6: so much wrong to the community. It's outlandish. It's outlandish.
Speaker 6: But unfortunately, I think the rhetoric of resentment, the rhetoric
Speaker 6: that people who say that Florida and other places have
Speaker 6: had too much racism for too long and that has
Speaker 6: to be addressed. I fear there may be a connection.
Speaker 6: You know, since twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, there does seem
Speaker 6: to have been a general increase in these sorts of
Speaker 6: violent attacks against American races, against Unamerican religions, and you know,
Speaker 6: given the tenor of the times, I'm afraid that we
Speaker 6: haven't seen the last of it.
Speaker 1: So the Jacksonville Sheriff T. K. Waters said, plainly put,
Speaker 1: this shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people.
Speaker 1: I mean, this seemed to be pretty clear cut to
Speaker 1: the sheriff. But what does it take for the Justice
Speaker 1: Department to say this is a hate crime and this
Speaker 1: is going to be a hate crime investigation.
Speaker 6: Well, so it's a really interesting situation because there's no
Speaker 6: potential defendant here, the defendant is dead, and it doesn't
Speaker 6: look like the guns were illegally transferred. And the ideology
Speaker 6: that this is a white country or maybe a white
Speaker 6: Christian country for white Christian people and people who don't
Speaker 6: fit into that category are harmful to the society and
Speaker 6: undermine it. That is a hateful ideology and ideology that
Speaker 6: I think is wrong and dangerous, but it's one that
Speaker 6: people are allowed to have because we do have a
Speaker 6: First Amendment and we do have freedom of thought, and
Speaker 6: if people want to have those ideas, they can. So
Speaker 6: it's not one hundred percent clear to me, is interesting
Speaker 6: what the Department of Justice may hope to find out.
Speaker 6: But to back up a bit, they do have jurisdiction
Speaker 6: over hate crimes. There are certain acts of violence based
Speaker 6: on certain prohibited grounds such as race, religion, gender disability,
Speaker 6: gender identity, sexual orientation. If there are certain violent acts
Speaker 6: that take place on those grounds and it can be proved,
Speaker 6: then the Department of Justice can prosecute people who do
Speaker 6: those things in federal court. And beyond that, the Department
Speaker 6: of Justice has the ability to investigate situations even if
Speaker 6: it doesn't appear there's a there's a hate crime per se,
Speaker 6: But they have the ability to investigate situations where, for example,
Speaker 6: civil rights might be violated.
Speaker 1: It would sort of be a broad investigation then, because
Speaker 1: as you said, there's no defendant. It's not like they're
Speaker 1: saying the police did something wrong or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's just to investigate the community.
Speaker 6: It seems to me like that's what's going on here,
Speaker 6: that they are investigating what is going on in the
Speaker 6: community that led to this. But the thing is, this
Speaker 6: is not the first act of racial violence. It's not
Speaker 6: the first act of racial violence in Florida. It's not
Speaker 6: the first time somebody has looked into it. There have
Speaker 6: been civil rights investigations by the state and federal government
Speaker 6: and by private entities that are concerned about these things.
Speaker 6: And so it's predictable what the Department of Justice is
Speaker 6: going to find out that motivated this particular offender. And
Speaker 6: you know, for an American in the twenty first century
Speaker 6: to decorate their property with swastikas, And there was a
Speaker 6: report that the offender here had a vest with a
Speaker 6: Rhodesian army patch on it, and that evidently is a meme,
Speaker 6: a common white supremacist symbol. And one would bet that
Speaker 6: what the Department of Justice is going to find out
Speaker 6: is that this individual was radicalized by white supremacist ideology
Speaker 6: that is readily available on a million and one place,
Speaker 6: is on the internet, and people who make the argument
Speaker 6: that the people who are the rightful heirs of this
Speaker 6: country the descendants of white Europeans. At one time the
Speaker 6: United States was organized for their benefit, which is true
Speaker 6: in many ways, and now it isn't. And you see
Speaker 6: what these white supremacists consider interlopers who have positions of
Speaker 6: power and responsibility and influence and opportunities for education, and
Speaker 6: what about the white people? So I wouldn't be a
Speaker 6: bit surprised that the sort of playbook that unfolded in
Speaker 6: lots of other cases is going to unfold here. That
Speaker 6: this is somebody who was not doing that well in
Speaker 6: their life, somebody who was disappointed by how things were
Speaker 6: working out for them, and somebody who was not emotionally stable,
Speaker 6: and somebody who had a fascination with weapons, and they
Speaker 6: found an explanation that it's not because they weren't working
Speaker 6: hard enough, it's not because they weren't talented enough. It's
Speaker 6: because bad people were standing in the way of what
Speaker 6: they were justly entitled to. And if only black people
Speaker 6: or Asian people, or Muslim people, or gay people or
Speaker 6: whoever could be put in their place, then everything would
Speaker 6: be restored to its proper place in the world.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, there have been so many hate crime investigations,
Speaker 1: and hate crimes are up. There's a new study that
Speaker 1: was in USA today shows that in the ten largest cities,
Speaker 1: the number of reported hate crimes rose twenty two percent
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, making last
Speaker 1: year the second consecutive year they hit a record high.
Speaker 1: So it seems to be getting worse instead of getting better,
Speaker 1: no matter how many investigations they have.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and the problem is we're a divided country. And
Speaker 6: I'm not saying and I would deny that your average
Speaker 6: Republican or your average Republican politician likes hate crimes, wants
Speaker 6: hate crimes. That's not it. But the rhetoric and the
Speaker 6: argumentation about our fellow Americans can sometimes be very negative,
Speaker 6: and the extremists, the people who are not emotionally stable,
Speaker 6: make too much of this. They take it seriously, the
Speaker 6: idea that, for example, the media is the enemy. And
Speaker 6: when some people say that it's a metaphor, and when
Speaker 6: other people hear that, some of them think that the
Speaker 6: problem in the United States really is some group. You know.
Speaker 6: It's a combination of this unrestrained rhetoric plus very wide
Speaker 6: availability of firearms, even to people who have profound mental illness,
Speaker 6: you know. And it's one thing to say that a
Speaker 6: law abiding, responsible American should be able to get a
Speaker 6: firearm and carry it for self defense or other reasons.
Speaker 6: It's another thing to say we should have laws that
Speaker 6: are so lenient that even somebody who is not well
Speaker 6: should be allowed to have a semi automatic rifle that
Speaker 6: is a very very powerful weapon.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: The combination of these things, I think is why we're
Speaker 6: seeing an increase in hate crimes. There's an increase in
Speaker 6: heated rhetoric, and there's an increase, thanks to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 6: in the availability of firearms. So some of the restrictions
Speaker 6: on firearms ownership that would have been possible in years
Speaker 6: past are no longer because of the rulings of the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court, and so we have more and more people
Speaker 6: who feel themselves provoked, and they have more and more
Speaker 6: ability to do damage. It is a remarkable situation that
Speaker 6: we find ourselves in a reversal of fortune after Obama,
Speaker 6: when it seemed like mabe racial tensions in this country
Speaker 6: were diminishing, and that proved to be an illusion.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being on the show, Jack, That's Professor Gabriel
Speaker 1: Chin of the UC Davis Law School, and that's it
Speaker 1: for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you
Speaker 1: can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast, Slash Law,
Speaker 1: and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every
Speaker 1: weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: M mhm.