NYT Reports That NY Court of Appeals Is Very Skeptical of "Tish" James' Almost Half-Billion Dollar Penalty Against Trump For No Crime at All

This regards the civil action against Trump Enterprise for, supposedly, overestimating the value of his assets when dealing with some of the biggest, most sophisticated banks on earth.

The loans he was applying for were all paid back. No one lost any money. In fact, the banks profited. They made a loan and collected it back, plus interest.

"Tish" James claimed that Trump's alleged overestimation of the value of his billion dollar New York properties was a fraudulent deception of... somebody?

[N]ow that the appellate court has finally reviewed the case, the judges sound very skeptical about James' case as well as the absurd award in a case that involved literally no losses to anyone connected to Trump's businesses:

A New York appeals court expressed skepticism on Thursday about a civil judgment of more than $450 million that a trial judge had ordered former President Donald J. Trump to pay after finding that he had fraudulently inflated his wealth.

At a hearing in Manhattan, members of a five-judge panel questioned both the size of the judgment and the validity of the case, which New York's attorney general brought against the former president and his family business two years ago.

The reporting from the New York Times make it sound like James got little sympathy from the judges. It's always dangerous to read too much into the Socratic questioning used by jurists in appellate hearings, but the pull quotes offered by the NYT sound pretty encouraging for Trump. The report describes Judge Peter Moulton as the most supportive of James' presentation, but even Moulton marveled at the size of Judge Arthur Engoron's award for a case without any losses or victims:

Toward the end of the hearing, Justice Moulton asked how the attorney general's office could "tether the amount that was assessed" by Justice Engoron "to the harm that was caused here, where parties left these transactions happy about how things went down?"

...

Two other judges expressed skepticism over the award and the case:

Justice Friedman, who appeared the most skeptical of the case, asked Ms. Vale to identify any other case in which the attorney general's office had sued "to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners."

Before she could respond, Dianne T. Renwick, the court's presiding justice, who generally seemed supportive of the case, added her own question. "And little to no impact on the public marketplace?" she asked.

More at the link.

Meanwhile, deranged partisan Jack Smith has presented his own arguments to insane leftwing judge Chutkan in DC, claiming that basically the Supreme Court decision on immunity is moot because none of Trump's actions were taken in his capacity as President and even those that were should still be criminal. This is obviously completely contrary to the Supreme Court's ruling, which recognized a fairly expansive doctrine of immunity.

The interesting thing is that Politico is "saying the quiet part out loud" -- they tweeted out this link with the headline, "Jack Smith has one last chance before Election Day to present his best evidence against Donald Trump."

They keep claiming "this isn't about politics" but they give themselves away at every turn.

posted by Ace at 01:00 PM

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