Elon Musk takes over Twitter

The two things have zero to do with each other, and in a way you are illustrating the points I was trying to make about that Trump fraud trial, in that unlike disclosure of material information when you offer a stock publicly -- something unambiguous and very tangible -- what happened in that Trump civil fraud trial was FULL OF ambiguity because of a pliable statute that lowered the burden of proof to the level of a kangaroo court and was used to go after a target (after a criminal investigation netted nothing they felt they could prosecute and win).

First, Trump was not convicted of a crime (a la criminal insider trading), it was a civil fraud trial. Nobody he did business with alleged any fraud. They could have sued him if they thought they had been defrauded. Nobody lost a cent from doing business with him as far as any of us know. And the only entity that was named in the suit, because the AG didn't have to prove anyone was actually defrauded, testified on behalf of Trump and said it would do business with him all over again.

It was a pliable statute that allows the AG to selectively accuse anyone of fraud -- without ever proving any INTENT to defraud, without having to name anyone who was defrauded and without proving any financial loss. In Trump's case, the trial was decided by summary judgment, in which a judge said, "Yeah, I think he's a fraudster too, so let's move onto damages -- let's make it a boatload of money and call it a day."

Criminal insider trading laws have nothing to do with any of that, but what I was getting at are that they absurd because information is asymmetric. Someone always knows something that the next guy doesn't, and it's precisely what makes for efficient pricing -- ALL of the available information gets priced into a security, and it's incumbent on people to be smart enough to realize that and be prudent before putting their money at risk. Someone shouldn't be punished for knowing more than the next person. It's also impossible to police knowledge. For every show the SEC and justice department puts on in the name of "fairness," there are thousands of others that go on doing business as usual, knowing that information is a commodity and treating it as such (in defiance of the absurd laws).

That said, certain things in securities law are very unambiguous (even if it is a stupid law that protects exactly no one and actually hurts anyone who lets their guard down because they THINK someone is protecting their ignorance). What I was talking about in the post this morning is entirely unlike what you are comparing it to, in that a prosecution would very tangible and have a much higher burden of proof attached to it. You have an obligation to disclose material information in an offering, and if Trump and Orland talked about an offering in advance of Orlando's IPO, there is a very specific law that explicitly states that it would have had to have been disclosed.

 

BTW. ... People lost their shit on here when I pointed out that what happened in that courtroom wasn't justice, it was a game of "let's find a way to get him."

Here were Jeb Bush and Joe Lonsdale -- of all people -- in an op ed making the same points I had, a few days later.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-...aw-new-york-delaware-courts-business-266a5559

In New York, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Mr. Trump to pay more than $350 million in a civil fraud judgment for inflating the value of his real-estate holdings. That case was brought by Attorney General Letitia James, who ran for office in 2018 on a promise to target the man she called “an illegitimate president.”

The unusual New York law Ms. James used to investigate and sue Mr. Trump didn’t require her to prove that he had intended to defraud anyone, or even that anyone lost money. The Associated Press found that of the 12 cases brought under that law since its adoption in 1956 in which significant penalties were imposed, the case against Mr. Trump was the only instance without an alleged victim or financial loss. Bankers from Deutsche Bank
, which lent money to Mr. Trump, testified that they were satisfied with having done so, given they were paid back on time and with interest. They also testified that they were uncertain whether the alleged exaggerations would have affected the terms of the loans to Mr. Trump—a key part of Ms. James’s case. Since there were no victims, the state will collect the damages.