New York appellate court overturns Engoron's $500M judgment against Trump | Fox News
By: Jonathan Turley (Fox News)
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Jonathan Turley: Letitia James' effort to get a 'trophy win' just turned into a 'tremendous victory' for Trump
Constitutional law attorney Jonathan Turley weighs in on breaking news that the New York Court of Appeals threw out President Donald Trump's massive $500 million civil fraud penalty.
In New York, a court revealed that a leading citizen had cooked the books by inflating questionable figures without any support in reality. Moreover, his wild overvaluation was widely viewed as motivated by his self-aggrandizement. The final reported figures are so absurdly inflated that they were rejected in their entirety. In the end, he was off by over half a billion dollars.
That man is Judge Arthur Engoron.
After a New York appellate court unanimously threw out Engoron's absurd half-a-billion-dollar judgment and interest against President Donald Trump, the irony was crushing. It was Engoron who seemed, as he characterized Trump witnesses, as having "simply denied reality." It made his notorious reliance on an assessment of Mar-a-Lago as worth between $18 million and $27.6 million seem like good accounting.
In the end, he could not get a single judge to preserve a single dollar of that fine.
Trump had a major court victory, but the battle continues. A court sketch depicts attorney Jesus Suarez questioning Eli Bartov as then-former President Donald Trump and Judge Arthur Engoron look on in Manhattan civil court in New York Dec. 7, 2023.(Jane Rosenberg)
For some of us who covered that trial, the most vivid image of Engoron came at the start. He indicated that he did not want cameras in the courtroom, but when the networks showed up, Engoron took off his glasses and seemed to pose for the cameras.
It was a "Sunset Boulevard" moment. We only need Gloria Swanson looking into the camera to speak to "those wonderful people out there in the dark!" and announcing "all right, [Ms. James], I'm ready for my close-up."
The close-up was not a good idea, and, on appeal, it was perfectly disastrous. The court found little legal or factual basis for his fine. The purported witnesses not only did not lose a dime, but they testified that they made money on the loans and wanted new loans with the Trump administration. That did not move Engoron. From the start, he was speaking to those "wonderful people out there."
You did not have to go far. In both the civil and criminal trials of Trump in New York, there was a carnival atmosphere in the street outside the courthouse. It was really not derangement as much as delirium. Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James had injected lawfare directly into the veins of New Yorkers. Pledging in her campaign to bag Trump (without bothering to name any crime or violation), James was elected based on her recreational rather than legal appeal.
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Yet, James could not have succeeded if she had not had a judge willing to ignore reality and cook the books on the fines. She needed a partner in lawfare. She needed Engoron.
Even for some anti-Trump commentators, the judgment was impossible to defend, and some acknowledged that they had never seen any case like this one brought in New York.
Judge David Friedman gave Engoron a close-up that would have made Swanson wince. He detailed how the underlying law "has never been used in the way it is being used in this case - namely, to attack successful, private, commercial transactions, negotiated at arm's length between highly sophisticated parties fully capable of monitoring and defending their own interests."
He accused Engoron of participating in an effort clearly directed by James at "ending with the derailment of President Trump's political career and the destruction of his real estate business."
Justice Arthur Engoron presided over the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump and his children in the New York State Supreme Court Nov. 13, 2023, in New York City.(Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)
Other judges said that Engoron's fine was so off-base and engorged that it was an unconstitutional order under the Eighth Amendment, protecting citizens from "cruel and unusual" punishments. So, Engoron not only inflated the figures but shredded the Constitution in his effort to deliver a blow against Trump.
Trump can now appeal the residual parts of the Engoron decision imposing limits on the Trump family doing business in New York. Some of those limits could be moot by the time of any final judgment. Ironically, if Engoron had shown a modicum of restraint, he might have secured a victory. During the trial in New York, I said that he would have been smart to impose a dollar fine and limited injunctive relief. That, however, required a modicum of judicial restraint and judgment.
Instead, Engoron chose to walk down the stairway into infamy. He was off by half a billion dollars, which could put him in the Bernie Madoff class of judges.
In other words, if he wanted to be remembered on that first day, Arthur Engoron succeeded.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage" (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
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[✘] NOT 1 APPEALS COURT JUSTICE UPHELD A SINGLE DOLLAR of his judgement.
Even the liberal NY appeals court realizes this was a political witch-hunt[✘]
That's what happens when you have a partisan hack DA and a partisan hack judge working on an agenda.
It's just funny how James is now facing similar charges.
I bet both her and Adam Shit get convicted for what they accused trump of doing.
This article has been reopened.
So - when is the judicial system going to keel-haul Engoron and James???
Oh right - they're in NY where everything is legal under their judicial oversight.
James has said she will take this up with the New York Appeals Court (which is the NY Supreme Court) for their review. So the final chapter has not yet been written.
According to the thread/seed, the Appeals court made this decision.
So they get to review/deny it again?
I don't fully understand how the courts are set up in New York, an article yesterday said that she would appeal to the Appeals Court.
Here's a statement from James...
Guess we wait to see. The information from Google isn't clear to me on how this is all set up. Seems to me if she appeals to the same court she would get the same results.
You're right. The whole thing can be tossed.