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On the docket: follow the money
The $83.3 million in damage causes that Donald Trump was ordered to pay for defamation E Jean Carroll may quickly seem like a big change. In New York’s civil case fraud trial, where a verdict is expected any day, the fine could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, drain the former president’s cash and prevent him from making more money by dismantling his companies.
“The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that Defendants used in business,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in September that the Trump Organization, Trump and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who are also executives, committed fraud by lying for years about the value of various assets of their company in order to inflate their value and get better conditions in the field of bank loans and insurance. The only question now is what Engoron will impose as punishment.
The Attorney General of New York, Letitia Jameswho prosecuted the case, has sought $370 million in fines and barred Trump from ever running a company doing business in New York State again and barred him from purchasing real estate or taking out a loan in the state for the next five years. years.
A ruling is expected any day. At a hearing in November, the judge said he was aiming to make a ruling by the end of January, although he had not set himself a firm deadline.
Whatever he decides, the financial penalty will likely be steep, even for someone like Trump, who is worth about $2.6 billion and has about $426 million in liquid assets, according to Forbes.
If Trump is banned from doing business in New York State — or, in one of the most extreme and least likely punishments Engoron could impose, his companies are liquidated — that could potentially force the sale of some of New York’s iconic properties that he built. his business reputation endures, such as Trump Tower in downtown Manhattan, home to the three-story penthouse that was his longtime home before he moved his residence to Florida in 2019.
New York’s anti-fraud statute gives Engoron “a lot of leeway” in his decision, perhaps an uncomfortable amount, said Eric Talley, a law professor at Columbia University. “There’s just not a good track record for companies of this size that are at this stage in terms of these types of proceedings involving this particular statute,” he said.
Talley suspects that Engoron is aiming for a “Goldilocks-like balance between having a completely toothless and spineless order that doesn’t actually do anything” and what would amount to a “corporate death penalty.”
Briefs
● Nathan Wadea special prosecutor in the Georgia Rico trial against Trump, settled his divorce case on Tuesday. After allegations that he and the Fulton district attorney… Fani Willis, is in a romantic relationship, records obtained during the divorce proceedings showed that he had twice purchased airline tickets for himself and Willis. The settlement means neither will have to testify under oath at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday after he was subpoenaed by Wade’s estranged wife.
But this isn’t over yet. Michael Romein, a former Trump campaign official and one of the former president’s co-defendants, is seeking to remove both Wade and Willis from the case and disqualify the entire district attorney’s office, claiming their alleged relationship is a conflict of interest. Trump filed his own motion to do the same last Thursday. Both Willis and Wade have been issued summonses to appear in court on February 15 for a hearing on the motion.
● On Monday, Georgia state lawmakers said passed a bill that would create a panel with the power to remove elected prosecutors from officepotentially giving them a way to remove Willis from office and end her prosecution of Trump.
● In the Florida National Security Documents criminal case, Judge Aileen Cannon was scheduled to meet in closed chambers with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith and prosecutors Wednesday to, as Cannon’s order put it, “assist in the court’s evaluation” of Trump’s requests for access to classified materials. The order also specified that Trump’s lawyers would not attend and that the meeting would take place in a “facility appropriate for the discussion of classified information.”
● Illinois essentially became the newest state calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether the 14th Amendment requires Trump’s removal from the presidential race for violating the United States Constitution by committing an insurrection. The State Board of Elections unanimously decided Tuesday that it did not have the power to decide the issue, sparking further legal battles. State officials in Colorado and Maine have ruled that he should be removed, while several other states have ruled the opposite.
Accomplices and victims
Former Trump campaign attorney (and Georgia plea negotiator) Sydney Powell allegedly received a spreadsheet claiming to contain private passwords of employees of voting technology company Smartmatic Marshall herring, president of the far-right TV network One America News, according to new legal documents from Smartmatic’s lawyers obtained by CNN. Smartmatic is suing OAN for defamation, and in legal filings it says the evidence indicates that OAN executives “may have engaged in criminal activity” because they “appear to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy.”
Peter Navarro, a close Trump ally and former government official, was sentenced last Thursday to four months in prison. He was found guilty last fall of criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring a Jan. 6 House committee subpoena.
What’s next
Every day We expect the verdict on the sentence in the business fraud case in New York soon.
Friday That’s the deadline for Willis to respond in writing to a motion arguing that she should be removed from the Georgia case because of an alleged romantic relationship with another accuser.
February 8th The U.S. Supreme Court has issued oral arguments on whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits Trump from running for federal office. The clause disqualifies former officials who previously took an oath to uphold the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US. It involves a Colorado state election official ruling that the amendment applies to Trump and would remove him from the presidential primaries in that state.
February 12 and 13 Hearings on motions on how to protect the classified information at the heart of the Florida documents case.
15 February Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee has scheduled a hearing on the motion to disqualify Willis and Wade from prosecution in Georgia.
Calendar crunch
Court watchers wonder what’s stopping the DC Circuit Court of Appeals from ruling on Trump’s claim that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution, which has slowed the special counsel Jac Smithcase of election interference. It’s been over seven weeks now Judge Tanya Chutkan paused the countdown to a March 4 trial date so the judges could rule on the appeal.
The three-judge panel hearing the appeal appeared skeptical of Trump’s claims when they heard arguments on Jan. 8, and were expected to rule quickly. But three weeks later they still haven’t made a decision.
There is no time limit for judges, and only one judge on the panel would be needed to slow things down. Two of the judges were appointed by President Joe Bidenand a, Judge Karen Hendersonwas appointed by George H. W. Bush. Henderson opposed expediting the case based on an earlier motion, though she expressed skepticism about Trump’s position during oral arguments.
“I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” she said from the bench.
The panel’s decision is just the first step in Trump’s pursuit of presidential immunity. Whoever the appeals panel rules against can (and most likely will) appeal to a full court hearing and then to—where this case will almost undoubtedly ultimately end up—the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the entire timeline of the election interference trial is on hold, and the longer this drags on, the less likely it is that a trial will happen before the 2024 election – if at all.