CHICAGO — Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general of New York, hit out at former President Donald Trump’s legal strategy at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday morning, defending her aggressive $454 million fine against him just hours after her office told an appeals court to uphold the judgment.
During a Thursday morning breakfast event where James was speaking, the Empire State attorney general told the Washington Examiner that the recent effort by Trump’s attorneys to appeal the costly judgment is “basically a repetition of all the things that he has said previously that have been rejected by the courts.”
“So I’m confident” the judgment will be upheld, James added.
James’s remarks come just hours after lawyers for her office urged an appeals court late Wednesday to uphold New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling. He found Trump and his business associates liable for civil fraud, imposed the multi-million dollar fine, limited Trump’s ability to do business in the state, and placed the Trump Organization under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor for at least three years.
“On appeal, defendants tellingly ignore almost all their deceptions,” Assistant Solicitor General Daniel S. Magy wrote in a 168-page filing, arguing that Trump, the Trump Organization, and top executives within it engaged in a “variety of deceptive strategies” to misrepresent the former president’s assets.
Rather, in his appeal, Trump used the same arguments he made at trial that banks were interested in working with the Trump Organization and found no fraud, Magy added.
In a defense filing last month, Trump’s attorneys called the judgment, which has risen to more than $485 million due to interest, an “unauthorized, unprecedented power-grab” and argued there were “no victims and no losses” from the company’s business deals.
The judgment against Trump has attracted a range of different opinions from prominent figures, from Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary’s vow to cease investment in the state as a result of the ruling, to former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitting in a June interview with HBO host Bill Maher that the fraud case “should have never been brought.”
In response to Trump’s claims that New York is no longer a friendly place to do business, James told the Washington Examiner that “clearly, businesses are doing well in the great state of New York,” pointing to the stock market being “at an all-time high.”
“He just obviously wants to call people names [and] wants to engage in distraction,” James added. “And unfortunately, at the end of the day, the law was clear, he’s engaged in a patented practice of fraud. And if you or I engaged in it, you and I obviously would suffer the same fate.”
The Appellate Division announced Wednesday that it will hear oral arguments in Trump’s bid to overturn Engoron’s decision on Sept. 26, just six weeks before Election Day and soon after the start of early voting.
Trump posted a $175 million bond earlier this year that ensures the state cannot collect the judgment while his team appeals.
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A decision by the Appellate Division court could come before the Nov. 5 election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, as it usually takes the court about a month to decide after arguments.
The appeals court could affirm the judgment, reduce it, change the penalty, or toss out the decision altogether. If the court does not rule in favor of Trump, the former president could petition the highest court in the state to take up his case.