by Jeff Childers
In the best story of the week, the New York Times ran an article headlined, “Trump’s Huge Civil Fraud Penalty Draws Skepticism From Appeals Court.”
The headline referred to Trump’s Inflated Real Estate case, where New York Judge Arthur Engoran soaked Trump for a $500 million dollar fine, for “overestimating” the value of his priceless real estate holdings. You’ll recall that wispy-haired Judge Engoran, who probably couldn’t estimate the value of a double-wide mobile home, substituted his own judgment of what Trump’s totally unique properties like Mar-A-Lago were worth.
Was it Trump Derangement Syndrome that caused Judge Engoran to value Trump’s irreplaceable real estate holdings at pennies on the dollar? Who knows. Whichever, Judge Engoran found Trump liable for civil fraud despite there being no fraud victims, despite that all Trump’s loans were paid back in full, and despite that the involved banks all testified they didn’t rely on Trump’s financials anyway.
According to the story, during the oral arguments the five-member panel of appellate judges asked lawyers questions seeming highly skeptical about Judge Engoran’s judicial misadventures. Justice Moulton, who seemed generally unsympathetic to Trump’s lawyers, still observed at one point that “the immense penalty in this case is troubling.”
Justice Friedman asked the attorney general’s lawyer to name any other case where the attorney general had ever sued “to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners.” Even before the lawyer could answer, Justice Renwick queried, “And with little to no impact on the public marketplace?”
At a different point, Justice Higgitt interjected,
“Sorry, but what’s being described sounds an awful lot like a potential commercial dispute by private actors.”
Toward the end of the hearing, Justice Moulton asked how the attorney general’s office could “tether the amount that was assessed” by Judge Engoron “to the harm that was caused here, where parties left these transactions happy about how things went down?”
It wouldn’t take all five justices to vacate the judgment. Engoran’s excessive award could be reversed with a decision by only three of the five justices. Questions appellate judges ask at oral argument aren’t always reliable signals but in many cases, they are decent barometers of the way things might be trending.
I predict they will send the case back for a drastically reduced award. While there is a chance they could reverse the judgment altogether —which is what should happen— given the politics involved, a full reversal seems unlikely.
Not only should the judgement be totally reversed, but Engoron and James should be disbarred and prosecuted for abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
The Judge should be removed from the Bench and retired along with all those involved in the Witch Hunt against Trump by Soros and his band of Globalists him(Soros)and his Son should lose their American Citizenships and be returned to face War Crime Charges from WW II