Twice-bankrupted casino owner Donald Trump has made questioning Obama’s birthplace a “pivotal part” of his supposed presidential run, but because Trump’s concerns about Obama’s birth certificate have been asked and answered years ago, the reality TV boss has been forced to resort to increasingly bizzare justifications for his doubts. Last night, Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that he questions the veracity of Obama’s birth certificate because he knows plenty of people who can easily forge documents to commit fraud:
TRUMP: Bill, I grew up with Wall Street geniuses. What they do in terms of fraud, and how they change documents.
Watch it:
Of course, securities fraud is a federal criminal offense, punishable by up to 25 years in prison. This type of fraud is also a serious and pervasive problem. From Enron to WorldCom to the Bernard Madoff scandal, “Wall Street geniuses” have defrauded Americans out of billions of dollars, causing economic havoc. More recently, banks have been implicated in the so-called “robo-signing” scandal, where bank employees didn’t even review mortgage documents they were signing, such as foreclosure orders.
But if Trump is aware that his friends were committing fraud or forgery, why didn’t he do anything about it? Did he witness fraud? Did he ever posses a forged document? (If so, that too could be a felony.) Or did he let his friends defraud people?