NY Judge Charging Trump $10K Per Day For Privilege Of Pretending He's Above The Law
What an impressive new thing for his legacy.
Donald Trump might have felt a glimmer of a tingle in his underwear yesterday when he found out fellow asshole Elon Musk would be buying Twitter to use as his own personal plaything, which may well mean Trump can stop dicking around with his own loser Truth Social website very soon, and get back on the Twitter sauce he craves.
But otherwise his day was probably pretty crappy, what with the revelations of Mark Meadows's texts exposing the inner machinations of the Trump coup, and all the fun news about what Kevin McCarthy says behind his back.
Oh yeah, and a judge in New York has officially held Trump in civil contempt of court, and he is being fined $10,000 per day for the privilege of pretending he's above the law. This is related to New York Attorney General Letitia James's investigation into Trump's shady ass hinky ass real estate valuations.
This judge, Arthur Engoron, has been dealing with the Trumps' shit forever now, specifically their cutesy legal arguments for why subpoenas shouldn't apply to them. The family screams "witch hunt!" and "unconstitutional!" and he just keeps whack-a-moling their dicks right in the balls.
AG James would like the records she has subpoenaed from Donald Trump on his business. She has not received shit. So Engoron did the contempt thing and then did the whack-a-dick thing with his gavel:
“Mr. Trump: I know you take your business seriously, and I take mine seriously,” said Justice Engoron, before he held Mr. Trump in contempt and banged his gavel.
And so now Trump is charged $10,000 per day, starting with yesterday.
James was pleased:
“Today, justice prevailed,” James said in a release after Engoron’s ruling. “For years, Donald Trump has tried to evade the law and stop our lawful investigation into him and his company’s financial dealings. Today’s ruling makes clear: No one is above the law.”
If you feel like you've read stories like this — about Trumps ignoring subpoenas and acting like nothing will ever happen to them — it's because you have. But the New York Times notes that this time the timeline might be a bit different, because James says her investigation is almost over, at which point she will (we hope!) commence to smacking the shit out of Trump:
After more than three years, Ms. James’s office said on Monday that it was nearing the culmination of its inquiry. During the hearing, a lawyer for Ms. James indicated that her office was preparing to file an action against Mr. Trump in the near future. That action is likely to be a lawsuit.
Ms. James, a Democrat, has previously said that the Trump Organization engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices but that she needed to collect additional records and testimony before deciding whether to sue Mr. Trump or his company.
The Times says it's possible this contempt thing might not last very long, though, if Trump lawyer Alina Habba is able to prove to the judge's satisfaction that Trump really has checked all the couch cushions and provided all the documents James wants. Habba claims he has, and that he doesn't have any of the documents James wants. Therefore they will appeal.
Moreover, Habba says this is all very unfair:
Ms. Habba said in a document filed with the court last week that Mr. Trump did not have any of the documents that Ms. James had requested, and that any such documents, if they existed, would be in the possession of the Trump Organization.
She added that Ms. James had filed the motion for contempt without warning, “seemingly in an effort to turn this matter into a public spectacle.”
If you've been reading Wonkette's coverage of all this, you are remembering correctly that Habba is the batshit one who makes scenes in the courtroom about Hillary Clinton spying and AG James is BIASSSSSSSS, like she's a guest on OAN or something.
Engoron says Trump hasn't proven he's been responsive to James's subpoena for shit, much less shown how hard he's worked to find the docs James wants. As the Times reports, James's lawyers said yesterday in court that during their entire investigation, they have gotten 10 whole documents "from Mr. Trump’s files and that Mr. Trump himself had not turned over any documents in response to the December subpoena addressed to him personally." (They've gotten a bunch of stuff from the Trump Organization. But this is about his personal documents.)
So that is what has happened with that. Donald Trump is being held in civil contempt of court, and he incited an attack against America to overturn an election he lost, and right now he's the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, should he want it.
America!
[ New York Times / AP ]
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