So punative damages are meant to scale with the wealth of a defendant so as to act as a proper punishment/deterrent of future offenses. Trump being able to crowd fund this punishment defeats the purpose of it. As such, either Trump should not be allowed to crowd fund at all (for anything, because he can always use that to undercut his punishment), or the court should compensate for this and multiply the damages to reflect this money stream into his net wealth.
GoFundMeās Terms of Service specifically forbid fundraising for āthe legal defense of alleged financial and violent crimes,ā so this fundraiser should be taken down. The next step would be for Trump to set up the equivalent sort of thing in-house, the way he made his own Twitter, then I really donāt know how this gets regulated.
It would be a shame if people reported this fundraiser to be a violation of GoFundMeās terms of serviceā¦
https://www.gofundme.com/c/terms
"PROHIBITED CONDUCT
ā¦
Without limiting the foregoing, you agree and represent, warrant and covenant:
A. not to use the Services to raise funds or establish or contribute to any Fundraiser with the implicit or explicit purpose of promoting or involving:
ā¦
- the legal defense of alleged financial and violent crimes;"
I thought they already have a statement saying it doesnāt violate their TOS. Which seems definitely wrong but who knows.
Possibly to prevent frivolous reports? Without a verifiable identity, anyone can create numerous reports with fictitious identities.
Devilās advocate:
Your average Trumpie has never heard of a predatory loan and believes students got themselves into debt, let 'em hang.
Meanwhile they also believe Trump is the victim of malicious, politically motivated, prosecution. Itās not his fault he owes 1/2 a billion dollars in fines!
Yeah they are gullible morons that can be tricked into believing literally anything.
Honestly sometimes it scares me how easy it would be to make money with various scams. Itād be so easy to come up with a scam suppliment with the correct mix of pseudoscientific bullshit with some heavily implied but legally non explicit nods to popular conspiracy theories. As for ingrediants you just need water, starch, caffeine and whatever mystical/rare sounding bullshit you can find.
Conservatives are terrible at business and economics. Their entire strategy is to enable and promote nepotism, monopolies and exploitation of the vulnerable.
The more they contribute to Trumpās judgements, legal fees, and lawyers fees, the less available to use to finance his general election campaign.
That might be true, but I am sincerely, genuinely, worried about where the money will come from instead.
This isnāt some principled elder statesman weāre talking about here. Heās not going to pass the hat around, see that itās not enough money, and pass it back saying āwell, we tried.ā No, winning is the only move heās left himself in this obscene farce of a career heās built, and thereās no low he wonāt stoop to in order to get there. Heād sooner put the entire campaign, and by extension The White House, up for sale than lose.
Did you miss the foreign governments paying for rooms in Trump properties at far above the normal rates for their areas, and then not even having anyone actually stay in the rooms? How about the special access to Trump depending on how much you pay at Mar a Lago? Or the lenders that write loans for him and then donāt go after him when he doesnāt repay them?
Trump has been up for sale since his first presidential campaign, so this wonāt suddenly make him vulnerable to corruption, as heās already one of the most corrupt individuals in politics.