Hochul lets the cat out of the bag about how politicized New York's prosecution of Trump was

[mystery-ak]

February 19, 2024
Hochul lets the cat out of the bag about how politicized New York's prosecution of Trump was
By Monica Showalter

Following the monstrous $355 million fine leveled against President Trump and his associates for a victimless claim of inflating assets in New York City, New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, assured concerned investors that they have "nothing to worry about."

According to The Hill:

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) addressed New York business owners in a new interview and told them there was “nothing to worry about” after former President Trump was hit with a $355 million fine and a ban on conducting business in New York for three years.

Hochul joined John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM, where she was asked if other New York businesspeople should be worried that if “they can do that to the former president, they can do that to anybody.”
“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul responded.

If that response was meant to assure, it did the opposite.

Trump was handed a monstrous fine from a prosecutor rabidly against President Trump politically, a woman so biased she ran for office on pinning something on Trump, which is illegal, teamed with a sneering, grotesquely biased, judge with many conflicts of interest including potential family profits who made it clear all through his courtroom sessions that he intended to destroy Trump.

The fine was grotesquely out of proportion to an utterly victimless "crime" of supposedly inflating assets, while witnesses testified that nobody lost money, loans were paid in full, and banks were happy to lend again. The judge himself, a man of no training in the matter, made the assessments of the values Trump's properties, such as Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, grotesquely undervaluing the property, ipse dixit. Real estate professionals raised their eyebrows at that one. Judge, jury, executioner -- and we thought this crap only occurred in tinpot dictatorships, or in Alice in Wonderland tales.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley described the fine as "obscene."

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/02/hochul_lets_the_cat_out_of_the_bag_about_how_politicized_new_yorks_prosecution_of_trump_was.html

[Maj. Bill Martin]

The general legal standard for when punitive damages violate due process is when they "shock the conscience".  I think Trump's got an excellent argument here, especially given the clearly politicized nature of the entire proceeding.

I also think there are due process concerns with the New York law requirement that the bond be paid before the appeal, especially when the size of the verdict is being attacked.  In essence, New York's rule makes some decisions unappealable.

Unfortunately, it is entirely possible that Trump has to go through two levels of state appellate jurisdiction before he can appeal to the Supreme Court.  Although I think he may have a weird shot at getting to SCOTUS based on the bonding requirement amounting to an effective denial of an appeal.