Appellate judges have questions about Letitia James’ lawfare case against Trump
The lawfare agenda against President Donald Trump includes a long list of cases and claims.
Assembled by Democrats, some of whom actually campaigned on the ideology of getting Trump to “bring him down,” they include documents disputes, arguments about his free speech, his business operations and in one case they changed a state law to allow a woman to bring a claim against Trump.
One of those, however, apparently now is facing a rugged road at an appeals court.
The case is New York Attorney General Letitia James’ claims that Trump changed the value of his properties to obtain better interest rates for his business operations.
She brought the complaint on her own, as no one had registered any dissatisfaction with their deals with Trump and his corporate organization. In fact, during the trial before Democrat donor Arthur Engoron, witnesses testified all the loans were repaid on time and in full, they had no concerns about their agreements and, in fact, would like to do business with Trump again.
The upshot, from Engoron, was a fine of some $350 million for Trump in a case with no damages. Then interest would add another $100 million – or so.
It is commentator Byron York, in the Washington Examiner, who now has listed some of the concerns raised by the judges in the appeals court who are reviewing Engoron’s agenda.
York described the case as “the most damaging, at least monetarily,” for Trump.
“It was a weak case, at best, for two reasons. First, it was politically motivated. James had run for office on a platform of pursuing Trump. ‘We will all rise up and resist this man,’ she once told a campaign crowd, ‘and ultimately, we’ll bring him down.’ Second, the trial revealed, in the words of this newsletter, ‘that there were no victims, that the loans were paid back in a timely and total fashion, that the lending institutions made the loans based not on Trump’s representations but on their own research, and that some of those institutions were eager to do business with Trump again,'” York reported.
James maneuvered the case so that Engoron, a “longtime Democratic donor” would decide the case alone, resulting in the nearly half billion dollar decision.
York noted, though, that appeals judge David Friedman pointed out it was not a case of a naïve victim being hurt. “It hardly seems to justify bringing an action to protect Deutsche Bank against President Trump, which is what you have here. You have two really sophisticated players in which no one lost any money.”
Then Llinet Rosado, another judge, expressed concern because the case had “little to no impact on the public marketplace.”
Further, Peter Moulton said, “The immense penalty in this case is troubling. … How do you tether the amount that was assessed by [Engoron] to the harm that was caused here, where the parties left these transactions happy?” He added, “There has to be some limitation in what the attorney general can do in interfering in these private transactions … where people don’t claim harm.”
And a fourth, John Higgitt, said any conflict would be a commercial dispute, and openly questioned whether James needed “guardrails” to keep her out of “an area that wasn’t intended for her jurisdiction.”
York pointed out the court’s decision, coming later, could affirm the whole penalty, throw it out, or anything in between.
“Even with all of her anti-Trump animus, James couldn’t figure out how to charge Trump with a crime, so she settled for trying to bankrupt him. She found a willing judge to make it happen. Now, we’ll see if the damage they did survives judicial scrutiny,” he said.