NYC Attorney Explains Why 4 Judges Voted to Keep Trump’s Civil Fraud Case Alive
veteran New York City attorney Francis Menton … argued that the justices’ rulings owed more to politics than to truth or justice.
If ever there was a case of “show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime,” it was New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud case against President Donald Trump. James made it clear during her 2018 campaign that she would use the law to take down Trump. “This illegitimate president [Trump] — I look forward to going into the office of the attorney general every day, suing him, and then going home,” she said.
Having failed to identify any real crimes, James resorted to charging Trump under an anti-fraud law, alleging he had exaggerated the value of his assets on bank loan applications.
Considering that New York City is the financial capital of the world and the city’s bankers are among the most sophisticated and savvy on the planet, that all of Trump’s loans were fully repaid, and that no one was defrauded, this was an astonishing claim to make.
But James was able to convince an equally corrupt New York judge on the merits of the case. In February 2024, following a two-month-long kangaroo court-style trial, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay a massive $355 million fine, plus interest. Among the other sanctions outlined in Engoron’s extraordinary ruling, Trump was prohibited from serving as an officer or director of any business in the state for three years.
Needless to say, James was delighted with the outcome. For a brief period, she amused herself by posting on X how much interest Trump was racking up each day on the confiscatory fine. Don’t all attorneys general do that?
+$114,553.04 = $464,805,336.70 https://t.co/gugrACDTpC
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 25, 2024
And exuberant liberal pundits repeated the same talking points: “Trump deserved it. He’s been playing fast and loose his entire life. He is not above the law.”
To a reasonable person, however, the ruling looked like the political hit job that it was, just the latest blow in the Democrats’ relentless lawfare campaign against Trump.
In a unanimous ruling last month, a five-judge panel in a New York appellate court agreed to throw out the fine, which had ballooned to over $500 million, entirely. They all agreed it “constituted an excessive fine” under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But that’s where their agreement ended. One justice, David Friedman, a Democrat, believed the entire case should have been thrown out. Two others “would reverse” some of Engoron’s decisions and “then send the case back for a new trial.” And while the remaining justices, Peter Moulton and Diane Renwick, were in favor of vacating the fine, they voted to “affirm” the rest of the case against Trump.
In a weekend op-ed, veteran New York City attorney Francis Menton, editor of the legal blog Manhattan Contrarian, argued that the justices’ rulings owed more to politics than to truth or justice.
Menton begins with some background on the New York State court system [Emphasis added]:
Unlike federal judges, New York State judges do not have life tenure. Justices of the Appellate Division have been elected to the Supreme Court for terms lasting fourteen years, and then at some point during those fourteen years they have been appointed by the Governor to the appellate court for a term that expires when their elected term is up. To continue to serve on the Appellate Division at that point, a judge needs to get re-nominated by his county party organization, run in a partisan election, win, and then get re-named by the Governor to the Appellate Division. Thus, judges whose term may be up soon, and who are not ready to retire and who like to keep their job, are very much subject to political influence in their decisions. Political influence is not relevant to very many of their decisions, but it is highly relevant in this case.
Moulton’s term ends in 2027 and Renwick’s in 2029. Higgitt and Rosado, the two judges who pushed for a new trial, face expiration of their terms in 2026 and 2028. Menton pointedly invites readers to “form [their] own judgment.”
Justice David Friedman, 75, who voted for the entire case to be thrown out, will face mandatory retirement next year. Menton explains that “nobody can touch him at this point, so he can freely speak his mind.” He included an excerpt from Friedman’s decision, which makes clear “the absurdity of the case.”
[Decision starts on page 221. Excerpt from page 224.]
On this appeal from the nearly half-billion dollar judgment against President Trump and his codefendants, two of my colleagues have cited scores of cases in an attempt to shoehorn this case into section 63(12). They have gone so far as to claim that the Attorney General, by bringing this action, has possibly saved the world from a replay of the financial meltdown of 2008; how this might be is not explained. Despite their efforts, they are unable to point to a single precedent – not even one – for the use of section 63(12) to target transactions such as those at issue here – bilateral, negotiated, arm’s-length transactions between highly sophisticated parties, which had no effect on any public market, and which were, so far as the parties to the transactions were concerned, complete successes.
From there, Friedman discussed remarks James had made on the campaign trail that demonstrated her determination to use the law to take down Trump. She made the following statement in September 2018.
I believe that this president is incompetent. I believe that this president is ill-equipped to serve in the highest office of this land. And I believe that he is an embarrassment to all that we stand for. He should be charged with obstructing justice. I believe that the president of these United States can be indicted for criminal offenses and we would join with law enforcement and other attorneys general across this nation in removing this president from office.
On the evening of Engoron’s decision to impose the unprecedented fine, the New York Post editorial board summed up the situation: “Democratic elites will chuckle into their martinis this weekend at the verdict, but your victory is pyrrhic. You’ve made Donald Trump a political martyr.”
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Lettitia James seems not to notice that she has been following the elephants in this circus parade and the cleanup crew that was ahead of her has wandered off.
.
A Pyrrhic victory is one that doesn’t shatter when you pour in boiling water.
No, that’s Pyrrhex.
I’m an Anchor Hocking / Fireking guy myself…
Close !!!
And now AG James is herself under investigation by the DOJ for, yes, mortgage fraud! Democrats have never learned that ‘What goes around, comes around’ and they probably never will.
They all will… once.
AG James knows that she has nothing to worry about if she is before a NY judge and jury. The facts won’t matter . . . only politics.
Not necessarily since mortgage fraud would be a federal crime in this case.
Forget James, she is just a symptom of the rot and will soon be forgotten. Why is Engeron still on the bench?
Classic Goebbels….
with her thugg credentials she should be a star in the wnba
Love the photo. Did she take nose-lofting lessons from Obama?
Look at any picture of her addressing a crowd. She is always nose up, looking over the assembled masses into the distance like a figurehead. Strange stuff.
Nope. From silverback go rilluhz
Yep. I said it. Fight racism with racism. Show it for the scam that it is.
None of this surprises me as corruption is endemic in NY. One finds it everywhere, and New Yorkers don’t so much mind corruption as much as they would like to get in on it. “Hey how can I make a buck out of this?” I learned this growing up there. With Trump the corruption gets amplified to an absurd level. The few people I still know, can’t explain why they are so anti Trump. All I get is: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
The corruption goes way way back. The lawyer father of a childhood chum told me that one gets a judgeship by a known contribution to the Democrats. One guy paid for his judgeship, but died before he got on the bench. His wife wanted the money back. She sued and won! Of course she had to win because the judge on the case knew how he got to be a judge. Somehow this outrage got no publicity, but it was common knowledge among New York lawyers.
Can NY recover from the embarrassment? Not if they elect Mamdani.
You are describing Congress! People will,spend a fortune to get elected, not to serve but to get rich. The days of Preident Kennedy’s question, “Ask not what your country can do for but what you can do for your country” are over, ask Pelosi!
Ask Ilhan Omar.
3,500% increase in net worth in one year.
Some will say that “it’s her husband’s money and she doesn’t control what decisions he makes.”
But she sure does control the information she shares.
That’s why they were so desperate for a Special Counsel.
They ASSUMED that he’d be able to find a whole host of crimes he committed in NY because every one of their pals is a crook.
Apparently Trump was the cleanest businessman in NYC.
This case underscores the inherent problems in electing prosecutors as well as judges. I’ve LONG believed that the common practice of electing prosecutors in our states is a bad one. The power of prosecution is vested WITH THE STATE. The prosecutors should work for the state Attorney General who should be appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the state legislature. IOW, it should mirror the federal system.
While there are potential pitfalls in appointing judges for life, the alternative is worse, IMO. Judges, like prosecutors, wield power vested in the state. They should also be nominated and confirmed by the state legislatures.
Would this solve the Blue State crime problems? No, they’ll still be giant pits of violence and criminality. But, adopting these changes would allow Red State governors power to curb the out of control crime in their urban areas. Prosecuting and SENTENCING criminals would necessarily reflect the will of the people of the ENTIRE state (exercised through the popular election of the governor and state legislature) rather than the will of a relatively small portion of the state living in dense urban areas.
Yes – the personal financial statements were grossly overstated
However – Fraud requires
A – Reliance on the fraud
B – a victim
C – Harm
There was no reliance
There was no victim
There was no harm.
The financial institutions who were “harmed” wanted to continue to do business with and make loans to President Trump and his companies.
There was harm, but it was to the Country and the Rule of Law.
Please recall that this same wench is the one who decided o take out the NRA some time back, with NO genuine cause. She would have been justified taking off againts Wayne la Pew Pew as an individual, but no,, she put the sights on the whole outfit. .
There is a single TRUE statement in Letitia James comments cited by Justice David Friedman to wit: “I believe that he is an embarrassment to all that we stand for.” But it’s the element of truth of that statement is dependent SOLELY on the fact that James is a Democrat and is speaking as a Democrat on behalf of Democrats.
This case should never have been brought and, in a JUST venue, would NOT have been brought or would have been dismissed, summarily WITH PREJUDICE and James would have been sanctioned for bringing it in the first place.
Democrat dominated venues are where Justice goes to DIE.