Donald Trump’s Legal Annoyance Strategy Is No Longer Working

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In their desperate attempt to prevent the New York attorney general from dealing a death blow to Donald Trump’s family business, former presidents’ lawyers continue to peddle the same failed argument in states across the country. And judges are starting to call out his legal team for its delay tactics in bad faith.

Trump’s latest fiasco in New York state court shows just how far his lawyers are willing to go to silence the former president and how much potential professional trouble they’re willing to put themselves in.

On Friday, a New York state judge refused to dismiss the AG’s $250 million civil suit against the Trump Organization for business and tax fraud, saying he was “totally unconvinced” by both lame arguments. which has been shot.

Trump’s lawyers continue to say that Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who is New York’s top law enforcement official, is simply engaging in a political witch hunt and doesn’t even have the legal right to go after the company over its extensive history of simply making the fake real. property valuations.

Last February, when the matter was still under investigation, Justice Arthur F. Engoron tossed those arguments aside when Trump was ordered to testify to investigators. In May, a state appellate court backed him when it said the investigation was legally initiated at its inception and well founded.

When the investigation culminated in a financial fraud lawsuit against the company and Trump mounted the same defense, Engoron told them in court in November that he was tired of hearing it.

On Wednesday, he warned the Trumps’ lawyers to stop making the same rejected arguments in an email that warned he was considering imposing sanctions for frivolous litigation. On Friday, he finally issued an order denying their request to dismiss the case and saying the sophisticated defense attorney should have known better.

Reading these arguments is, to quote baseball sage Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra, Deja vu all over again, he wrote.

The fact that the Trump team ridiculously recognized that they represent the former president by having the same arguments presented again prompted Engoron to write that their action strongly suggests disrespect.

But he stopped short of punishing the lawyers themselves, including Alina Habba of New Jersey, Christopher M. Kise of Florida, and Clifford S. Robert of Long Island.

In particular, Habba found himself in the sights of the judges, after repeatedly exchanging barbs with him in court in a manner rarely seen in the profession that often hinders him from the bench, accusing him unfairly sided against the former president, and made disparaging remarks about his law. clerk

It got so heated at times that his own colleagues on Trumps legal team quietly criticized him for putting on a show better suited for nighttime cable news programs than the courtroom. (He has been one of Trumps attack dogs on right-wing TV channels like Newsmax and One America News Network.)

Habba did not respond to a request for comment about Engoron’s decision to spare him this time.

But legal ethics scholars have noted that it is unusual for legal proceedings to be this ugly.

This is quite rare. Lawyers have to worry not only about financial penalties, which may be less of a concern, but also court discipline that could lead to a public censure, license suspension or disbarment, the professor said. of New York University law school Stephen Gillers.

The first time Trump’s legal arguments failed, Trump tried to evade a subpoena to testify under oath about how he regularly falsified financial records to inflate the value of his assets. property either to get better bank loans or to maximize tax write-offs on donated land. Then, as now, the move was seen as an outright delay tactic.

I think the fact that Trump’s lawyers are repeating the same claim is a sign to the court that they are acting in bad faith, bringing the claim just to delay the trial or to make a political point. Courts penalize lawyers when they believe the lawyers are abusing the courts in this way, said Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor who specializes in professional ethics.

Trump’s lawyers are so desperate to block James’ investigation that they’ve even asked judges outside of New York City to intervene, so far without success.

In December 2021, Trump pushed to sue James in federal court in upstate New York, hoping a US district judge would use his broad authority to stop a state-level investigation. Nothing came of that misadventure, and the case was dismissed. US District Judge Brenda K. Sannes ruled it was unfair for James, who has vowed to target Trump as AG as he runs for that political office, to follow an investigation after hearing the about claims of fraud from an insider.

Trump failed to produce any evidence that the state’s trial was conducted in bad faith, he wrote.

Trump sued James again in November, this time in a local state court from his oceanside estate of Mar-a-Lago in remote Palm Beach County, Florida. The new spin on this lawsuit is James’ unfair effort to obtain information about his revocable trust, which contains his private estate plans for the payment of his wealth upon death.

The lawsuit alleges that James abused his position as Attorney General for the State of New York to pursue a relentless, damaging, public, and unapologetic crusade against President Trump, a resident of Palm Beach County, Florida, who with the stated intention of destroying him personally. , financial, and political.

That didn’t work out either. The lawsuit was moved to federal court, where the former president collapsed when it came before a judge who had become familiar with Trump’s notorious delay tactics and wasteful litigation strategy. It didn’t help him that it came when the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud in a parallel investigation run by the Manhattan District Attorney and James’ office justifying his own investigation into the company.

The Trump Organization was found guilty by a New York jury on several counts of tax fraud. To block now a civil enforcement action by the New York Attorney General would be unprecedented and contrary to the interests of the people of New York, US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote, later adding in a footnote that this trial has all the hallmarks. of being both annoying and pointless.

Trump’s lawyers now find themselves in the position where they must finally come up with explanations for why the real estate mogul falsified the value of his 11,000 square foot New York City flat in Trump Tower by tripling its size on paper. And among other inexplicable financial games, they also have to defend how Trump inflated the value of his forested estate north of the city before he turned it over for conservation, valuing it as if it were a profitable development project versus failed land. it was a deal then.

Right now, Trump and the AGs investigators are answering each of the legal questions in the face of a trial set to begin this October. For his part, the attorney general celebrated how the Trumps’ delaying tactics reached the end of the line.

“Once again, Donald Trump’s attempt to evade the law has been rejected, he said in a statement on Friday. We sued Mr. Trump because we found that he engaged in years of extensive financial fraud to enrich himself and cheat the system.”

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