Kevin O’Leary to Coates on Trump’s Fraud Trial: ‘Excuse Me, What Fraud?’

COATES: “Because there are probably a lot who are saying to themselves, ‘I‘ve never falsified my business records. I know what a square foot looks like. I know what I can ask for and what I have the money to support.’ So I wonder to what extent that really is true. But on the second point, wouldn‘t there be many companies who would not want to do business or loan money to people like yourself for investors if they know that they can get away with fraud and there‘s no recourse to protect them?”
O’LEARY: “Excuse me, what fraud? This is not about Trump anymore. When you get a developer — when you get a developer that builds a building and he says it‘s worth $400 million and he wants to borrow $200 million from a bank, which happens every day everywhere on earth, including every American city, every developers and entrepreneur, they shine the light on their building and they say it‘s worth 400. The bank does its own due diligence, as was done in this case, because they‘re very good at it, at the banks are very good, and they say, ‘No, it‘s worth 300. We’re only going to loan you 150 million. That haggling has gone on for decades. That‘s how it works. And then in this case, even, the bank that was supposedly defrauded testified and said, ‘We didn‘t lose anything. We want to do business with this guy again. We‘d like to.’ But the judge said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no. Let‘s penalize this developer for 355 million.’ And if we‘re going to do that, let‘s penalize all the developers all across America. They‘ve all done the same thing. All of them should go to jail and we should stop building buildings. That‘s what the message is from New York. Even the governor herself is concerned about what this looks like to investors all around the world. It‘s not just U.S. domestic. All around the world people are talking about what happened here. You really think people want to invest money in New York after this?