The first three days of Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial were spent in court, and he had defeats in a number of charges brought against him. It was a torturous legal week for him.
The former president was unsuccessful in his Friday attempt to suspend the trial while he challenges a pretrial decision that might result in the loss of Trump Tower and other valuable properties. The fraud trial will now proceed the next week.
Although the appeals court judge denied Trump’s request to halt the trial, she agreed to give him temporary control over his corporate assets.
The main issue in the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James was settled before the trial ever started by Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the case. According to his decision, Trump often misled banks, insurers, and other parties by inflating the value of his assets on his annual financial statements, which were used to close agreements and receive loans.
Trump, who is hoping to retake the presidency, has refuted accusations of malfeasance. On the first day of the trial, he appeared calm as he sat in the courtroom. Nevertheless, he exploded in front of the cameras during a break for lunch, branding the investigation a “witch hunt” and criticizing Engoron and James. The trial does not have a jury since neither party wanted one.
Trump’s attorneys had requested that the trial be put on hold and that Engoron not be allowed to enforce a decision he made last week from the state’s intermediate appellate court. This resulted in the cancellation of Trump’s business licenses and the appointment of a court-appointed receiver to manage his businesses; lawyers referred to this as the “corporate death penalty.”
Trump’s attorneys contended that the decision might impact up to 1,000 employees in addition to Trump and the other defendants.
The appeals court “upheld New York law and put a halt to any cancellation of business certificates, receivers, or dissolution,” according to Trump attorney Christopher Kise, who was quoted by The Associated Press.
Trump’s supporters, according to James, were “falsely claiming victory” over a resolution that her office had suggested.
James stated in a statement that “Donald Trump’s attempts to delay this trial have once again been rejected.” Another judge rejected his attempts to escape punishment for his years of deceit. However, Donald Trump lives in a make-believe universe where facts are irrelevant and money grows on trees.
In the midst of the trial, Engoron on Thursday mandated that Trump and the other defendants provide retired federal judge Barbara Jones, the case’s court-appointed monitor, with a list of all the entities the decision applied to. They would also notify Jones in advance of any attempts to form new corporations to “hold or acquire” the assets of existing companies as well as any applications for new business licenses in any jurisdiction.
After the appeal rejected the last-minute request to postpone the trial, Trump’s attorneys on Thursday abandoned the complaint they had brought against Engoron.
Former federal prosecutor and current state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek that the lawsuit was “a short-term tactical move designed to delay the start of the civil fraud trial,” similar to most of what Trump does.
“When the maneuver of filing suit against the presiding judge didn’t work—the trial started as scheduled—the main reason for the suit evaporated,” McAuliffe said.
A federal judge turned down one of Trump’s expert witnesses in a trial to establish damages for author E. Jean Carroll, which was a setback in a different lawsuit.
Carroll made the first time in 2019 that she had been assaulted by Trump in a dressing room of a high-end department shop. The former president refuted all allegations. Carroll received $5 million in damages from a jury in May, which found that Trump had sexually harassed and defamed her but had not committed rape.
According to the AP, her attorneys are now requesting an additional $10 million in compensatory damages as well as “substantially more” in punitive damages due to statements he made both before and after the jury’s decision.
Donald Trump proposed calling Robert J. Fisher as an expert witness to refute Carroll’s witness, sociologist Ashlee Humphreys, and U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan granted Carroll’s motion to exclude Fisher’s evidence in an order on Thursday.
The $500 million lawsuit Trump had filed against Michael Cohen has already been abandoned. A crucial witness in a criminal prosecution involving hush money payments made during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to cover up rumors of extramarital affairs is reportedly his former attorney and fixer.
Trump had charged Cohen with “spreading falsehoods” “with malicious intent” and doing “vast reputational harm” for discussing the payments Cohen made to women during the 2016 campaign in public.
91 charges have been brought against Trump in the four criminal proceedings, two of which were filed in state courts in New York and Georgia and two in federal courts in Washington and Florida.
The Florida complaint claims he handled secret data improperly, while the cases in Washington, Georgia, and Florida are connected to his attempts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election.
At his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office, Trump allegedly told Australian millionaire Anthony Pratt about American submarines with nuclear capacity that could have been classified. According to reports, Pratt was questioned about the exchange by federal investigators probing into Trump’s handling of confidential documents.
But in a move that benefits Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon, the judge he nominated to preside over the case, has temporarily halted litigation regarding case materials while she considers his request to push back the trial date until after the 2024 election. The trial is now set to take place in May.
In court, the previous week was “bruising for Trump,” according to veteran federal prosecutor Harry Litman, who spoke on MSNBC.
