As former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz's tell-all book becomes public, those who have studied and written about Donald Trump for years are coming forward to agree with some of the observations.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace Friday, former Trump biographer Tim O'Brien recalled some of the more bizarre conversations he's had for the 2005 book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.
"Most of Donald Trump's finances, the stuff he says publicly never added up," said O'Brien. "This was at the core of the lawsuit he filed against me was about, because the book accurately reported he spent decades inflating the value of everything he touched. In fact, during the litigation when we were deposing him we asked how he valued the golf courses. He said, 'I don't keep any documents."
Wallace was shocked and humored.
O'Brien recalled asking Trump, "you don't keep a profit and loss statement?" The self-described billionaire, said, "No, no, no.' I said, 'how do you know they are with their worth?' He said, 'mental projections.' He has basically gone through his whole life mentally projecting toward everything around him."
While O'Brien was talking about finances, he was also insinuating psychological projections.
"I think the issue is, yes, of course, he inflated it, these things, forever," he continued. "And, of course, he lies and he engages in exaggeration and hyperbole. The challenge for prosecutors is to prove that was a crime. And I think that was the thing that tore apart the [district attorney's] own team. All of them had good intentions. Mark Pomerantz ended up on one side of the equation and other people in the office ended up on another side and they couldn't resolve their differences, whether they could take this excellent evidence to court, charge him criminally and prove he knew what he was doing."
Pomerantz's book describes the debate between DA Alvin Bragg, who took over after Cy Vance left. Bragg didn't buy into Pomerantz's argument, leading to a loud parting of ways that resulted in a public resignation level in the New York Times.
He went on to say that they might still be looking into bank fraud for Trump, which is likely what they're pressing bookkepper Allen Weisselberg while he's stashed in Riker's Island Prison for accounting fraud. The Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal payoffs are different cases, he argued.
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