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?
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.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY