Judge Engoron’s retribution - Washington Examiner
Byron York
JUDGE ENGORON’S RETRIBUTION. Former President Donald Trump has just a few weeks to find a way to pay, or guarantee that he will pay, the $355 million fine that a New York judge imposed on him in the lawsuit brought by Democratic Attorney General Letitia James. The suit was the culmination of James’s campaign to bring financial ruin on the former president, and it might succeed. Unless it is reduced on appeal, the actual amount Trump will owe, including interest, could top $450 million.
That’s insane, of course. Even assuming that the case proved Trump overstated the values of some of his properties for the purpose of getting lower interest rates on real estate loans, the other things that the case revealed — that this was an example of selective prosecution, 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 — all that meant that a far smaller penalty, perhaps a tiny fraction of what Judge Arthur Engoron imposed, would be appropriate.
Engoron wrote a 92-page opinion explaining his actions. First, if you wondered why there was no jury and the decision was left to Engoron and Engoron alone, the judge noted that that is New York law in this case. James structured the lawsuit so that Trump could not appeal to the judgment of a jury. “There was no right to a jury,” Engoron wrote, “and the case was ‘tried to the Court,’ the Court being the sole factfinder and the sole ‘judge of credibility.'” So if you heard that Trump’s lawyers were so inept that they “forgot” to ask for a jury trial — that’s not true. They didn’t ask because they knew they were never going to get one.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/2864228/judge-engorons-retribution/
