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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Last night, a New York appeals court dealt Donald Trump another blow, refusing to stay next week’s trial in the civil fraud case brought by Attorney General Letitia James’s office.
A week ago, Trump asked the First Judicial Department to intervene and force the trial judge, Justice Arthur Engoron, to rule as to whether some of the conduct charged by the AG was outside of the statute of limitations. Essentially, Trump argued that the only relevant information was when the loan was made, and annual statements of finance submitted afterward “relate” to the original loan document and are functionally backdated — conveniently putting them outside the SOL. Justice Engoron had not yet ruled, and Trump argued that the trial scheduled for this week must be postponed due to lack of ruling on a crucial issue.
But no more! Because on Tuesday, the trial judge dropped that massive order granting partial summary judgment to prosecutors and finding that Trump, his family, and his company had engaged in persistent fraud. And in the order he disposed of the SOL issue.
“Defendants would have this Court apply a bizarre, invented, inverted form of the ‘relation back’ doctrine, pursuant to which if one aspect of fraudulent business conduct falls outside the statute of limitations, then all subsequent aspects of fraudulent conduct also fall outside the statute, no matter how inextricably intertwined,” the trial court wrote. “Of course, this is contrary to controlling case law, which holds that a cause of action accrues at the time ‘when one misrepresents a material fact.’”
So even if Trump can’t be charged with fraudulently obtaining loans before July 13, 2014, he can still be charged with submitting fraudulent documents to those lenders every year thereafter. In fact, the court has now ruled that he did just that. And with that ruling, the basis for Trump’s demand that the appellate court stay next week’s trial is moot.
Luckily, Trump is handling this with his usual gravamen and aplomb.
In New York State Supreme Court, these cases take many years to get to trial. My Political Witch Hunt case is actually scheduled to start on Monday. Nobody can believe it? This is a “Railroading” job, pushed hard by the Radical Left DOJ for purposing Election Interference. A very SAD time for New York State, and America!
Well, at least that one didn’t contain any racial slurs.
He’s also consoling himself with this amazing article from the NY Post in which real estate columnist and restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo points to two real estate zoning decisions which were reversed — out of Justice Engoron’s 20 years on the bench — as evidence that “in every case that involves real estate, Engoron is plain nuts.”
Even Cuozzo concedes “that Trump historically has wildly overvalued his holdings is hardly a secret — his boasts were long a laughingstock among real-estate pros.” But somehow the “Mar-a-Lago judge’s developer-hating past is a big win for Donald Trump.”
We thought the “Mar-a-Lago judge” was Judge Aileen Cannon. But then again we thought this week was an unmitigated disaster for Donald Trump, so what do we know?
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
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