Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York may suffer further losses in appellate courts to President Donald Trump, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley predicted Thursday.
A New York appeals court ruled Thursday that the $355 million civil penalty issued by New York Judge Arthur Engoron in February 2024 violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines. Turley told “Faulkner Focus” guest host Aishah Hasnie that while the ruling was a “tremendous victory” for Trump, more wins could be coming for the president.
“This is obviously a tremendous victory for President Trump, but it’s long overdue. During this litigation, many of us described this entire effort as a grotesque use of this New York law. No one lost money in this case. The banks actually wanted more business from President Trump,” Turley said. “No one had ever seen an effort like this. It was an effort by Letitia James to have a trophy win against Trump and what this opinion has done is reduce what was a mounted marlin to something of a guppy. It has removed the fine and left in place the injunctive relief that President Trump can now appeal. So, it is possible that even that could go to the wayside.”
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“The good news is really for the New York court system. This regains some of the credibility that was lost during this process,” Turley continued. “Many of us stood there in disbelief that James was allowed to do this. She succeeded in securing or she was fortunate enough to secure a very favorable judge, Judge Engoron, and I want to note, by the way, that both the judge and James tried to effectively price Trump out of even appealing the case. They insisted that he would have to pony up half a billion dollars just to question what they did in the case and it was an outrageous effort to effectively price out an appeal. It didn’t work. Now we can see that the appellate court said this should never have happened in terms of the fine.”
James sued Trump in September 2022, alleging he overstated the value of real estate holdings to obtain loans after vowing to investigate Trump during her initial campaign for attorney general in 2018, during which she labeled him an “illegitimate president.” Turley said the appeals court ruling would also calm businesses in the state.
“There are still legitimate questions here with regard to the injunctive relief,” Turley told Hasnie. “The court obviously fractured on these issues. The good news for New Yorkers is that the court of appeals really sent a message to the business community, the legal community, that they are not going to allow raw lawfare.”
Engoron ordered that Trump pay the civil penalty plus interest and banned him from being an officer or director for any company or organization based in New York for three years following the civil trial.
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